Local farmers want the public to know, North Carolina’s farmers markets are open for business.
North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services has categorized the state’s farmers markets as being the same as grocery stores; they are allowed to remain open during the coronavirus shutdown. At the State Farmer’s Market, you’ll find local produce, meat, desserts and plants for your garden. Please support your local Farmers Market this spring!
Mike Jones, owner of Mae Farm in Franklin County, has been selling his pork, beef and dairy products at the State Farmers Market since 2004. As a vendor, he has seen an increase, albeit slight, in sales this spring, even as the shadow of the coronavirus lingers everywhere.
Last November, Jones renovated his location at the market, adding a counter where the only customers handling his products are those that have made a purchase. But he’s still stressed about what the future holds.
“It is a worrisome time,” Jones says. “I am concerned if the state were to close the market down. It may not have a huge impact on the community, but it would on me.”
Indeed, there is no rest for the independent local farmer.
Oftentimes, the work is seven days a week, sun-up to sun-down and, even then, there’s no guarantee that a crop won’t be ruined by weather or insects or the herd won’t get sick. Add to that the difficulty of competing with mega-farms run by global corporations that offer cut-rate prices and it’s a wonder farmers can sleep at night.
But with a global pandemic threatening to shut down the very venues where many local farmers earn their livelihoods, at the opening of the spring season no less, the uncertainty we’re all feeling likely translates to sleepless nights for our farmers. For many, the only fallback is a shaky plan to make home deliveries. The serious risks of bankruptcy or being forced to shutter farms loom large.
Fresh produce at the State Farmers Market | Photo by Jennifer Robertson
At 15,600 square feet, the Raleigh State Farmers Market is one of the largest in North Carolina and it’s where many farmers in the region earn their livings. The Farmers Market has already closed its main restaurant and the other two are only offering carryout. Sim McIver, a manager at the Farmers Market, has been in constant contact with officials at the North Carolina Department of Agriculture to discuss the very real possibility of closing the market.
“Vendors are worried,” McIver says. “They’re worried if the market is going to stay open. No one knows how long this is going to last. Things are happening so fast and there’s really no training for something like this.”
In the meantime, McIver’s staff is taking extra precaution with sanitation and cleanliness, encouraging vendors to keep customers from handling produce unless they’re purchasing it and to wipe it off if they do. Locally grown food is handled by fewer people than the produce at the larger stores and the state market is open air which significantly decreases the risk of exposure in comparison to the enclosed spaces of larger stores.
Couple these safety benefits with larger groceries being cleaned out by panicked shoppers and many produce vendors have yet to see a dip in sales. Some have even seen an increase in commerce, attracting both new and regular customers. If the state deems the market safe enough to stay open, there may be a silver lining. But if the coronavirus were a horse, no one is putting their cart in front of it anytime soon.
Jones of Mae Farms says he has recently made several bulk sales to customers making what he calls “precautionary purchases” and he has noticed an increase in new customers. He says his regular customers haven’t slowed because “they trust we’re going to be here.”
But so far, farmers have only seen the best-case scenario.
Jones’ fallback plan if the market were to close for an extended period of time would be to make home deliveries.
“I would have to apply for a permit to move around, try to deliver food for people,” he says. “But I’m just not set up for that kind of business.”
Jennifer Lusky is the operations manager for Rare Earth Farms which has been selling all of its meat at the State Farmers Market for 10 years.
Lusky says she has also seen a recent increase in sales which she believes is due to grocery stores running out of organic meat. Closing down the market would be devastating for her farm and the employees that work there.
“It is very scary business-wise, especially for a small farm with our sole income coming from the sales of our product at the State Market,” Lusky says.
Her fallback plan if the market closes or if quarantines keep customers at home is also to try to restructure her business to make home deliveries. It is unclear for Lusky or Jones how that would work as a business model in comparison with selling their food at one of the most popular markets in the area, they say, but hopefully, they won’t have to find out.
For Jennifer Britt, owner of Britt Farms, the selling season hasn’t started yet. For 10 years, her strawberries have gone to State Market in mid-April, the only place she has ever sold them. The short shelf-life of most produce, especially strawberries, makes farmers even more susceptible to steep declines in attendance or stoppages at the market.
“Once the produce is ready, it has to go somewhere,” Britt says.
Britt has taken to social media to encourage people to support the market.
“In my opinion,” she says, “eating local right now is more important than it has ever been.”
Bill Walker’s produce and bison meat from his Walker Farms has been a staple at the State Farmers Market for 12 years. Pushing 70, Walker doesn’t make it down to the market in person much these days. Instead, he delegates the work to employees.
When I asked him if he’s ever seen anything like this in his life, his answer is, “No, have you?”
He is concerned, he says, but knows that all things pass.
“I tell you one thing, we’re not going to run out of food, we just won’t have a place to sell it,” Walker says. “If they were to close the market, I guess the cows and the chickens and the buffalo can eat the produce. Then we won’t have to buy feed.”
Loop artist Zach Deputy is truly a one man band. Using live recording devices, he lays down drums, bass, keyboards and other instruments on a loop, one at a time, and then sings and plays guitar over top of it all in an original brew of what he calls “island-infused, drum ‘n’ bass, gospel-ninja-soul.” We spoke with Deputy at his home in Savannah about giant bullfrogs, disc golf and why he hasn’t listened to music in years.
You play all across the country. What about the North Carolina vibe sticks out to you?
My dad grew up in North Carolina so we used to [come here] most summers to visit my grandmother in Franklin. North Carolina always meant the red clay at my dad’s, my grandmother and Cheerwine. From my kid’s memory, I thought of Franklin as the world in “Mario” where, for the first time, everything was bigger; the mushroom heads were bigger, the blocks were bigger. We were outdoors, fishing for catfish and bass. I remember seeing this bullfrog jump that had to be 3 feet long. It was the most giant bullfrog of all time. It seemed like a magical place, butterflies everywhere. The mountains of North Carolina, you can’t get much prettier. They’re so welcoming and beautiful.
You have a big voice. Tell us about your vocal influences.
I love Appalachian music. I love Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, love gospel music growing up, too, love Harry Belafonte, a lot of calypso and salsa, Tito Puente. I came from a bilingual house and even if I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I emulated it. Fifteen years ago, I stopped listening to anything. I asked myself, ‘What is the voice of my heart,’ and I did not want to be influenced by anybody else. All those influences as a kid and lack of influences as an adult, that’s me.
So when you’re on the road you don’t listen to music?
Oh no, not at all. My job is not to have a musical IQ. My job is to keep my heart pure so it is not fake or unwarranted. I’m a soul singer, everything else is technical jargon. What I try to do for my audience is be knowing of myself, understanding of myself, to be myself in front of other people.
You play a lot of disc golf. What is it about that game that draws you?
It’s a grassroots sport and I identify with that as a musician. That’s my whole motif of how we run my thing, grassroots, a small group of guys trying to do big things. It is very zen-like. To be good at disc golf you have to be good at knowing yourself, at letting go, at not trying to control reality, at believing in yourself. You have to be good at seeing the possibilities. It is a good sport to learn about yourself and about life. In this world, where people don’t really talk much anymore or open up to each other, you gotta go out there and hang out face-to-face for a couple of hours. It’s really good for connecting with people on a deeper level.
In 1932, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in “My Lost City,” his lament for the death of the nation’s jazz age, that “there are no second acts in American lives.” But, as the Chapel Hill band Squirrel Nut Zippers makes clear, in jazz, as in life, there are second chances.
In the 1990s, the Squirrel Nut Zippers was one of a handful of bands that gave a second act to the vaudeville, gypsy-jazz and swing music popular during the early decades of the 20th century. The band had the balance of lead vocalist Tom Maxwell’s swaggering stage presence, Katherine Whalen’s smoky vocals, Jimbo Mathus’ talents in songwriting and the backing of a jumpy, rip-roaring band of horns, violin, banjo and ukulele. The band was versed in rockabilly and boogie-woogie jump-hoodoo and, like a home-brewed bottle with XXX printed on it, the musicians had rejuvenated an old recipe that the world would drink down to the last drop.
Squirrel Nut Zippers’ original songs, “Hell” and “Put a Lid On It,” became anthems for the era of swing revival, and the band’s second album, “Hot,” went certified platinum. The Zippers toured with Neil Young, played at Bill Clinton’s inauguration and the 1996 Summer Olympics, and the band’s music featured in a computer chip commercial and in movies and TV shows.
But after four years in the pop-stratosphere, the band’s quick fall was as staggering as its rise. The original musicians recorded their last studio album of new material in 2000, among legal and financial entanglements—including disputes over the publishing rights to some of their hit songs—and personal in-fighting.
Following successful revival tours on and off over the years, Mathus—encouraged by renewed interest in “Hot” and its approaching 20th anniversary—wanted to breathe new life into the mostly dormant band. He assembled an ensemble of New Orleans-based musicians for touring and, in 2018, the revival version of the Squirrel Nut Zippers released a new studio album called “Beasts of Burgundy.”
“I realized I wanted to update the sound, and update the template of what we do,” Mathus says. “We got a bigger, nine-piece band instead of the six or seven pieces we had in the past. We have a venerable rhythm section, a three-part horn section, and I used my [New Orleans] contacts to get the cats I really wanted to be a part of the revival.”
The band’s Inevitable 25th Anniversary Tour kicks off in 2020; this month, the Zippers’ Holiday Caravan tour makes three stops in North Carolina, including at Raleigh’s Lincoln Theatre, playing a mix of holiday tunes and Zippers originals.
“The only person left over from the Squirrel Nut Zippers is me,” Mathus says. “I decided I wanted to put it back together in a permanent, lasting fashion, not just for a few reunion shows, but put something to keep the name and the brand alive.”
Mathus, who now lives in northern Mississippi, says he always looks forward to returning to the Triangle and especially to Chapel Hill, where it all began.
“I would never have been able to start a group like that anyplace else,” he says. “Definitely a special place. Zippers wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for that area. There were record labels, there were venues that encouraged original music and an active audience to check it out.”
After the Houston native quit his day job in 2000 to go pro full-time, honing his act, playing small venues, living on the road, he’s finally getting some of the big breaks he deserves.
In September on NBC’s new comedy competition series “Bring the Funny,” Saturday Night Live fixture and show judge Kenan Thompson selected Siddiq to advance to the finals.
“Every piece of material you’ve ever performed I’ve never heard before and I listen to a lot of comedy,” Thompson told Siddiq. “You come up with some brilliant material that is untouched by anybody I’ve ever seen.”
Siddiq has a method.
“I live 24 hours a day and I write about the 20 minutes I find funny,” he tells Raleigh Magazine. “I read the paper, talk to people. As long as I’m living life, I’ll have material. Everything is day to day, I don’t stick to one subject. I don’t write for the moment. I might not feel the same at 7:30 as I do at 10:30. Things involving my children, my family, my friends. They give me a lot of things to talk about. My perspective on comedy is how to give perspective on things that happen to people, whether good or bad.”
And Siddiq has experienced his share of both.
Performances on HBO’s “Def Comedy Jam” and BET’s “One Night Stand” led Comedy Central to name Siddiq the No. 1 Comic to Watch in 2013. In 2015, the network booked him for the first season of the standup show “This is Not Happening” and Comedy Central Presents produced Siddiq’s first half-hour special in 2016, as well as his first full-hour special “It’s Bigger Than These Bars” in 2018.
“It’s Bigger Than These Bars” was filmed in the Texas prison where Siddiq served six years for a drug offense. His audience was comprised solely of inmates. Siddiq is happy to offer his opinions about prison reform—he says societies should work to address issues that send people to prison in the first place—but he doesn’t want to dwell on how being incarcerated has affected his comedy.
“For 17 years prior [to doing “It’s Bigger Than These Bars”], I never spoke about it,” Siddiq says. “That was by design because once you do one thing, people try to make you a one-trick pony. I was doing comedy prior to doing any prison stories and I have only been doing prison stories for the past three years. It’s never been a big part of my show. Since I’ve done it the last three years, that’s all people want to talk about.”
Indeed, it would be unfortunate to pigeonhole Siddiq as an ex-con comic. In segments of his special, he has conversations with small groups of prisoners that come across more as documentary than comedy. He is thoughtful and, as Thompson notes, wholly original, funny in a time when the stakes are high, the future uncertain and the reality absurd.
Ali Siddiq performs at the Goodnights Comedy Club November 29 and 30, with shows at 7:30 and 10:00
Video games aren’t just for kids anymore. In fact, they’ve long been regarded as an art form and the video game industry continues to grow in terms of mainstream appeal and advancing gaming technology. Many of the world’s most talented visual and musical artists work in the electronic gaming industry, including Emmanuel Fratianni, a big league maestro, conductor and composer for television, film and video games. Fratianni has led, and has had his compositions performed by, some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras; this month, he conducts the North Carolina Symphony in a performance of “Video Games Live,” music from all your favorite games including Mario, Zelda, Halo, Warcraft, Final Fantasy and more, at Meymandi Concert Hall. Fratianni spoke with Raleigh Magazine from his studio in Los Angeles.
How would you describe a “Video Games Live” performance to someone who’s never seen or heard it?
It’s a symphonic and fun live performance. It is almost like a rock concert because it is very engaging with the audience. People get really into it. They do not sit in their seat quiet, they react to the music. [“Video Games Live” founder] Tommy Tallarico is the emcee and engages with the audience and there is much laughter. It is nothing like a classical concert. It really is like seeing a rock concert with a symphony orchestra and the visual elements and the light show offers a feast for the eyes. We keep it light, we don’t like to take ourselves too seriously because that’s not the point. We keep video games fun for everyone, and we keep it onstage that way as well.
How is conducting “Video Games Live” different to conducting a classical or traditional symphony?
It’s very different because “Video Games Live” is a multimedia show. There are three screens with synchronized videos playing at the same time. My role as a conductor in that specific genre is to make sure that whatever is played is perfectly synchronized with all the events that are going on on the screens.
Who are you conducting and who is on stage?
This is the third time [the NC Symphony] invited us and it is a wonderful orchestra in Raleigh, very high quality. I think it accommodates roughly 60-70 [instrumental] players on stage, plus a choir. At times, we’ve had 100 players on stage. Tommy plays the electric guitar, as well as serving as emcee. It sounds big, and visually, it is very impressive as well.
How about the composing aspects of video game music?
These video game composers whose work I am conducting I know, and they have families, and they wake up in the morning, take their kids to school, and the next thing they do is get in their studio and lock the door and immerse themselves in the video game and write music all day long. They are incredibly creative and innovative. That’s what I tell the audience, these composers are some of the best alive today, and they are my age (52) and younger. Unlike most classical composers today, they’re still working.
Do you play video games, or have you ever?
I played games as a kid, we all did. Then music took over. I came to [game music] composing from composing for television and film, and first felt like a bit of an outsider. I am not a dedicated gamer, but love writing for them. Now that my son is 8 years old, I play games with him. So it has come a bit full circle.
The NC Symphony will be performing “Video Games: Live” at Meymandi Concert Hall on October 5.
