One thing, he learned from the evening, remarked Ron Sowell, once he finally got to don a guitar on Saturday, was this: “I’m never going to trust my friends again.” | Photos by Douglas Imbrogno

It was quite the surprise. For the past couple months, Ron Sowell, one of Charleston’s most prominent musicians, expected to be the headline act this past Saturday at the Clay Center’s Walker Theater, to close out the year-long Woody Hawley singer-songwriter series. Sowell, who founded the series, normally hosts it. But the Mountain Stage band leader was to be featured for his own accomplished musicianship and body of songs. He’d rehearsed for weeks with musical mates. He was pleased to see how well the tickets sold — more than 100! — one of the highest advance ticket sales ever for the series.

Little did he know that the whole evening had been hijacked. Patricia Ansley, who works with Sowell on the Hawley Series, secretly planned for more than six months an alternate event: ‘Ron Fest.’ The evening was to be instead a musical roast and homage to Sowell’s decades of performing, his benefit work, his musical mentoring and inspiration to a host of singer-songwriters and young folk in Charleston and around the state. Family and friends came from as far afield as his homelands of rural Texas and — yes, it’s true — land of aliens, Roswell, New Mexico.

Mira Stanley, Sowell’s daughter, and Jon Wikstrom, one of his writing partners, share a tune at ‘Ron Fest’ at the Walker Theater.

Sowell was honored, toasted and roasted in several ways. A few among many:

• Bob Noone, the singing satirical attorney with a band called the Well Hung Jury, stepped onto the stage in a striped zoot suit. He gave ample evidence to the jury that — in the words of Sowell’s infamous tune he proceeded to sing — “White Boys Just Can’t Dance.”

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Click to enlarge. Photos by Douglas Imbrogno

I don’t know what kind of spiritual padre Father Sadie is at the Sacred Heart Co-Cathedral, being a retired Roman Catholic. But he’s one heckuva real estate developer of spiritual property zones. First, props to the flower-filled, double fountain space (click thumbnail photo at right) on the church’s side plaza at the corner of Virginia and Leon Sullivan Way. This is one of Charleston’s most lovely public grottoes (when the gates are unlocked, which they often are). It’s especially peaceful with the white noise of the very cool fountains going and the smell of fresh flowers wafting in the air. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Douglas Imbrogno. Click to enlarge

What’s your favorite old building in Charleston that should not, at all costs, be demolished or allowed to fade away until its too costly to save? Here’s mine. What are the plans for this Art Deco landmark once — if? — the new library plans come to fruition in this section of downtown Charleston? How about the Quarrier Diner Coffeeshop?

Photo by Douglas Imbrogno. Click to enlarge

For those online readers who live in temperate climes where you only get a hint of Spring or none at all, Charleston’s Spring is just about one second away past its peak, meaning it’s still pretty fine as this view down Virginia Street toward the Catholic Co-Cathedral illustrates. Click here to view Gazette photographer Lawrence Pierce’s slideshow homage to West Virginia Springtime.

Photo by Douglas Imbrogno. Click to enlarge

It’s not often you get to showcase the above phrase in a socially responsible way. Living in a household with two teenagers, I usually hear the phrase in its socially un-responsible incarnation, usually when one of them seeks control of the computer keyboard from the other. Someone has tacked these flyers up in a corner window of the building on Quarrier Street across the alley from Gallery 11.

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Those of us who patronize the place have had many a fine evening’s entertainment at the Clay Center. Yet the place has had its problem finding its stride in the years it has been open. A chief conceptual design flaw was the decision, at least initially, to not place any available parking or gathering spaces in the expanse of lawn, asphalt and sidewalk that fronts the citadel of culture. (You have to wonder whether this was partly so the moneyed classes would have an easier drop-off point at the front door through which to swish and rattle their jewelry. Yes, school buses, do, as well, but still…) Read the rest of this entry »

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What you are looking at — one guess, yes, that’s right — is the new downtown Charleston headquarters of Ashmore Optical for President at 1021 Quarrier Street. No, wait…. Obama for President. Kenny Wright and Tony (“I’m just holding the ladder”) Burks of the Riggs Corporation are swapping in the new name for Barrack HQ as the endless Democratic presidential primary campaign continues.

Here is the ‘After’ shot, taken a week later.  The West Virginia primary takes place Tuesday, May 13 and the state’s votes will award 39 delegates to whomever looks best in a swim suit. Or maybe that’s that other American pageant. You’ve got until April 22 to register to vote in the state’s primary. Do it. Here’s the last time we visited Obamaville in this blog…

The problem with Spring (and this is also why the season is so precious) is that the very instant you say to yourself, “Oh! It’s Spring! Cool…” almost the very next day Spring is over. So, I fully expect that were I to walk past this weeping cherry tree near the back entrance to the Fairfield Inn at Leon Sullivan Way and along Washington Street tomorrow Spring would be, like, done, caput. See it and weep. So, here’s my solution: Look at this photo instead — and not go that way tomorrow.

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If you’ve passed by the shuttered Vandalia Lounge on Hale Street recently, you’ll notice a come-on for a new business. That, and Bat Boy. Bat Boy? Well, we’re happy to find Bat Boy anywhere in West Virginia, him being a native, and all. If HE opens a bar there we might be persuaded to drop by. Then, there are the claims (on the front window) that Vandalia blazed the trail for high-end bars in Charleston, where the martinis are named after cars with fins and no one without a collar is allowed in (at least in the earliest iteration of Vandalia).

We still miss barmeister Pierre, who was cashiered and is now making high-end cement fixtures and furniture. The bar-to-be still sounds like a Virgil Sadorra project. Anyone got news? Speaking of BBoy, all things considered, and considering his recent run, we’d rather have Bat Boy succeed Sen. Robert C. Byrd, when he passes on to that great Senate cloakroom in the sky, God bless him, instead of guv’nr Joe.

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We’ll let an old Japanese poet have the say on the photograph above of a magnolia tree blossoming forth in front of First Presbyterian Church along Virginia Street. This verse comes from the following website, and is offered in the spirit of letting go of those wintry discontents: “The verse below addressed to the Mikado Nontoku (313-399)… appears to be a nature poem; it is in fact an innuendo song. The poet points to the blossoms of spring and in doing so suggests that it is time for the winter discontents of the court to give way to a new fruitfulness.”

In Naniha see
the plum-tree’s blossoms.
The captive Spring has slipped
through Winter’s bars to flaunt
its floral sprays.