Saturday January 11 * 8pm * $10 * TICKETS

In the late 1970s, a group of like-minded avant-garde musicians at University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa channeled the spirit of Dadaist Alfred Jarry into a full-blown big-band ensemble to support the visionary Fred Lane (née Tim Reed). With a unique “stripmine crooning” leading his bands, the Rev. Fred Lane releases two legendary LPs for Kramer’s Shimmy Disc label out of NYC in 1983 (FROM THE ONE THAT CUT YOU) and 1986 (CAR RADIO JEROME). ICEPICK TO THE MOON is his third LP released in 2019 on Feeding Tube Records. ICEPICK is also the name of Skizz Cyzyk’s 2018 documentary on Fred Lane and his musical adventures and this screening at Rhizome will be the film’s DC premiere.

Equally zany and hailing from the low country of South Carolina, Charlie McAlister’s catalog has been described as “charmed pop music, wry without being goofy, ineffably simple, personal and universal at the same time” (Oxford America). Before his untimely death in February of 2018, McAlister managed to release dozens of LPs, cassettes, zines, and low-fi art on both national and international labels as well as other outlets. His paintings and his films are also treasures that cover a variety of southern motifs from shrimp boat captains to lecherous debutantes to corrupt park rangers. A sampling of his short films, only recently converted to digital format by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science, will be screened in DC for the first time at this Rhizome event.

The evening will open with a short musical tribute to The Rev. Fred Lane by Team Sardine (Amber Dunlevy, Peter Geddes, Marc Minsker, etc.), followed by a screening of ICE PICK TO THE MOON (90 minutes). The second set will feature a screening of a handful of Charlie McAlister films (16 minutes) followed by a musical sendoff by Team Sardine.