Rock Candy

In January 2021, the Arkansas Times raises a glass to all things boozy with a series we’re calling Drink/Drank/Drunk. Here's a playlist to accompany the occasion.

Bernie's been busy.

A walk in the woods in the city. 

No "porkchop" for Symone.

Here — in no particular order — are 50 Arkansas artists/musicians/podcasters who, thankfully, didn't keep quiet this bizarro year. Tell us what we missed, find something you like, throw in the artist's coffers what you can to support it, and pray like hell they'll muddle through to a time when they can perform it for you in person.

We talk with Stan Liszewski of Terminal Nation about social media dysphoria, being pissed off in 2020 and his band's new record, "Holocene Extinction."

Kay Toinette Oslin, a Grammy-winning pioneer in country music and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Famer, died Monday, Dec. 21, 2020. She was born May 15, 1942, in Crossett, Ark., and grew up in Memphis and Houston.

From the Arkansas Cinema Society today comes news that Kody Ford, a Fayetteville resident, UCA/University of Arkansas graduate and founder of The Idle Class magazine, will become ACS' director of statewide outreach and educational programming/NWA program director.

If you’ve let this much of December go by without making a gift-giving plan, we’ve got a few suggestions, most made in Arkansas and all made to delight the recipient.

Compassion Works For All, a Little Rock-based organization that offers therapeutic programs to incarcerated people and others, is re-airing its virtual benefit concert, 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 17.

Featuring Broadway star Laura Leigh Turner ("Mean Girls"), ASO's "Home for the Holidays" concert is free to watch, streamed live from Robinson Center Music Hall, and features ASO Concertmaster Kiril Laskarov and trumpet player Ross Ahlhorn. 

Arkansas has a queen on the RuPaul runway. Go, Team Symone!

Ballet Arkansas is teaming up with Symphony of Northwest Arkansas (SoNA) for two world premieres choreographed by Ballet Arkansas's Executive and Artistic Director Michael Fothergill and contemporary choreographer Madison Hicks.

Check out Black Paper Party, an Arkansas-based wrapping paper company launched by three Black women to introduce more Black representation in wrapping paper imagery.

Arkansas got really lucky when Criswell's bus broke down here and he decided to take up the pen and paintbrush.

Banished from evocative gallery showings in a winter that calls for hunkering down hardcore, art enthusiasts and politically minded thinkers should put 21c Museum’s new exhibit “Refuge” on their radar.

The festival will showcase films created by participants in LKA's Inception to Projection filmmaking program

Hours are 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday.

We talked with poet Geffrey Davis over email about his latest, “Night Angler,” a 96-page wonder that manages to make a poem about evasive trout feel as if it belongs next to an elegiac verse for Tamir Rice or, as in “Pillow Kombat with the Ultimate Sleep Fighter,” alongside a meditation on Davis’ life as a new parent. 

Under a slightly revised title — “Holiday Hang In There” — Hill has put together a lineup of beloved Holiday Hangout musicians in virtual form, to be screened on the Arkansas Times YouTube channel Friday, Dec. 11 and Saturday, Dec. 12.