Month: June 2020
Artists from many genres have stepped forward to offer their words and support for those affected by systemic racism. Following a frustrating and anger-filled few weeks sparked by the death of George Floyd — and amplified by the unsolved murder of Breonna Taylor, as well as the death of Rayshard Brooks — people across America placed a much-needed emphasis on the Juneteenth holiday. Some artists used to the day to deliver new music, one of them being Reason.
In the midst of working on his upcoming album, Reason reached into his vaults to release “Field N****,” a song he recorded two years ago. “When sitting around feeling as though I haven’t done enough I added the last part of this song and shot this video 2 days ago,” he said in an Instagram post for the song. “Love my label for allowing me to give this to you all and I hope it resonates with you the way it did for me when creating it”
The song came with a video, which features a number of black-and-white images that represent the pain and struggle throughout Black history, from Rosa Park on a Birmingham bus to Sandra Bland struggling in the back of a police cruiser.
You can listen to “Field N****” above.
Father’s Day is almost here. Like any holiday, it’s going to mean something different to everyone. If you’ve got a good relationship with your dad/ father figure, consider yourself lucky. Bask in that feeling of appreciation for a second. Consider a call, a card, or maybe a gift. And if you’re going the gift route, ponder a bottle of whiskey. Small batch whiskey, in specific.
Why small batch? Katie Nierling, general manager at Ska Street Brewstillery in Boulder, Colorado, sums it up pretty well.
“Small batch whiskey is a treasure,” she says. “It highlights the nuance of place and the talents of the distiller. Our dads are special people, shepherding us while we are young and then letting us grow to be individuals on our own. You could say the same for small-batch whiskey — watched closely and tenderly year after year in the barrel, then carefully selected and sent out into the world.”
If you’re looking to give the father figure in your life a bottle of small batch whiskey, you don’t want to grab the first one you see. You want quality. That’s why it’s always best to ask the experts. Here’s what a few of our favorite bartenders deemed the most gift-worthy small batch whiskeys for Father’s Day.
Widow Jane Lucky Thirteen Bourbon
Barry Enders, general manager at Philadelphia Distilling in Philadelphia
If you can get your hands on a bottle of this, do not think twice. Dad will love it. Widow Jane Lucky Thirteen is a collection of barrels of 13 year-old bourbons that are influenced by the greatly varying temperatures and humidity levels of their original source and their time in Widow Jane’s rick house in Brooklyn. The different rickhouse positions, combined with climate variations, have led to subtle deviations in flavor and alcohol strength.
Blanton’s Bourbon
Danny Caffall, lead bartender at The Mansion Bar in Dallas
I like Blanton’s, one of the original single barrel bourbons. Vanilla, caramel and butterscotch all come together with perfect balance. As of late, it is becoming harder and harder to obtain so giving this as a gift is an act of pure selflessness. Truly heroic stuff.
Garrison Brothers Cowboy Bourbon
Nancy Conaway, bartender at Cassidy’s in Fort Worth, Texas
Garrison Brothers. This small batch bourbon is not only delicious and rich, but also has an incredible history. It’s faced many challenges by being the first legal distillery in Texas, as well as locally sourcing to deliver an amazing product. Truly special.
Elijah Craig Small Batch
Zack Musick, Beverage Director at Merriman’s in Hawaii
Obviously, there are many great small batch whiskeys out there, but when it comes to a gift for a father figure, in my eyes, there is a clear answer; Elijah Craig Small Batch.
A baptist preacher in Kentucky, Elijah Craig is credited with being the first to char the inside of oak barrels to make bourbon. Today this is one of the practices that separates bourbon from other whiskeys, so in many ways Rev. Elijah Craig is considered the father of bourbon. The mash bill will usually come in around 78% corn, 10% rye and 12% barley, which makes the dark amber spirit rich and round on the palate. Not only will this bottle not break the bank I consider it to be the perfect whiskey for an Old Fashioned.
Black Maple Hill Small Batch Bourbon
Kenneth McCoy, chief creative officer at The Rum House in New York City
The best small batch bourbon if you can get your hands on a bottle in my opinion is Black Maple Hill Small Batch Bourbon. That being said, it’s extremely pricey and super hard to get but if you want to impress your father-in-law this is it. Liquid gold, it’s super smooth, rich in wood and burnt orange and the right amount of sweet.
The next in line if you don’t want to break the bank is a bottle of Noah’s Mill Small Batch Bourbon, an incredibly easy-drinking whiskey that’s super smooth with a beautiful nose, considering the proof of 114 — a blend of 4 to 15 year whiskeys.
Glenfiddich 14 Year Bourbon Barrel Reserve
Anna Mains, brand ambassador at Monkey Shoulder
The Glenfiddich 14 Year Bourbon Barrel Reserve will secure your status as favorite child for sure. It has a lot of the approachable vanilla bourbon notes that We all Love, but with the finesse of a perfectly aged single malt. It will be enjoyed by both Scotch and bourbon lovers, so you can’t go wrong.
The Balvenie Sweet Toast Of American Oak
David Powell, brand ambassador at Hudson Whiskey
I think I’m going to get my dad a bottle of the Balvenie 12 Year Stories: “The Sweet Toast of American Oak” this year. He started to get into bourbon about 8 years ago when I was head bartender at Red Rooster Harlem, and it was always fun to open up bottles from our back bar for him that he hadn’t tasted yet to help accelerate his journey into the category. The Balvenie just brought on their apprentice malt-master, Kelsey McKechnie, to train under the legendary David Stewart as they push on towards the future of the distillery, and I think it would be a perfect bottle to introduce him to Scotch.
Peach Street 10 Year Bourbon
Katie Nierling, general manager at Ska Street Brewstillery in Boulder, Colorado
Peach Street’s Ten Year Bourbon is Colorado’s oldest original bourbon and only needs one single cube of ice and orange twist to sip and savor. It’s a perfect gift for the father figure in your life.
Weller Antique 107
Tim Wiggins, co-owner and beverage director at Yellowbelly in St. Louis
I recently gifted my father-in-law a bottle of Weller Antique 107. I gifted it because I had consumed the majority of his Evan Williams Single Barrel and I definitely owed him. I love the Weller Antique 107 as a gift because it has a classic Kentucky bourbon flavor profile with just a little more heat than your standard bourbon. I think it bridges the gap between standard and over-proof whiskeys really well and can introduce a father figure to something they haven’t tried much of.
Nikka From The Barrel
Todd Johnston, beverage director at Thompson Nashville
Japanese whiskey is becoming increasingly more recognized as a refined and unique expression of whisky. There are many collectible Japanese labels out there and one that is decently easy to find is Nikka Whisky. Nikka From The Barrel would make a great gift if your dad is a whisky guy and looking to try something new.
Jefferson’s Small Batch Bourbon
Brock Schulte, bar director of The Monarch Bar in Kansas City
When I think gift-worthy, I think unique, one of my favorite local brands is J. Rieger and Co Kansas City Whiskey. I also really enjoy the different cask finishes of Jefferson’s Small Batch Bourbon, Rum Cask Finish and Pritchard Hill Cab Finish are two of my favorites.
On Friday, news broke that acclaimed English actor Ian Holm had passed at 88. Holm was a prolific thespian, winner of many awards and a nominee for 1981’s Chariots of Fire, with a diverse résumé that includes everything from the heartbreaking grief drama The Sweet Hereafter to the wacky futuristic saga The Fifth Element. But for most viewers he’s perhaps best remembered as the older Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Jackson was quick to honor Holm. As noted by ComicBook.com, the filmmaker took to Facebook, where he penned a lengthy tribute to an actor whose screentime was brief but indelible, leaving an impression with only a handful of total minutes.
“I’m feeling very sad at the passing of Sir Ian Holm,” Jackson began. “Ian was such a delightful, generous man. Quiet, but cheeky, with a lovely twinkle in his eye.”
The filmmaker — who up till then had mostly made genre movies, as well as the more serious (though f/x-heavy) Heavenly Creatures, starring no less than Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey — admitted he felt “nervous about working with such an esteemed actor,” but that Holm “immediately put me at ease.”
Holm later put in cameos in two of Jackson’s Hobbit films, but that almost didn’t happen.
Fran [Walsh, Jackson’s collaborator and partner] and I had dinner with Ian and his wife Sophie in London, and he told us that he was very sorry, but he couldn’t do it. Adding to our shock, he confided that he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and could no longer remember lines. He had difficulty walking, and certainly couldn’t travel to New Zealand. Always a private man, he told us that he’d basically retired, but wasn’t announcing it.
This was a blow because we had worked out a nice way to hand the role over from Ian as Old Bilbo, to Martin Freeman as Young Bilbo. I described this to him, and he liked it. I also told him how my mother and an uncle had both endured Parkinson’s for years, and I was very familiar with the effects of the disease.
Jackson quickly devised a Plan B: He wouldn’t make Holm come to New Zealand but rather shoot his scenes independently of the rest of the production, near his home in London. “By the end of the dinner he nodded slowly, and said, ‘Yes, I think I could do that,’” Jackson recalled. “But I knew he was only doing it as a favour to me, and I held his hands and thanked him with tears in my eyes.”
You can read Jackson’s full tribute over here.
(Via ComicBook.com)
Regardless of what ends up happening with the NBA’s proposed bubble league to finish out the 2019-20 campaign, the league is going to have a draft and free agency at some point. The timelines have, of course, been moved around due to the league’s COVID-19 hiatus, and on Saturday, we got a sense of when these two major offseason events will occur.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the 2020 NBA Draft will take place on October 16. This would fall three days after the reported last day that the NBA season could conclude, should the Finals go a full seven games.
Source: NBA Draft will be on October 16, with early entry deadline on August 17.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 20, 2020
As Jonathan Givony of ESPN noted, that date includes a nugget regarding when college and international players have to make up their minds on staying in the draft or returning to school/their club.
A bit of a bombshell here. What this means is that college and international players who had previously elected NOT to enter the 2020 NBA draft now have until August 17th to revisit those decisions and potentially enter now. News story coming. https://t.co/2W4wn1j37M
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) June 20, 2020
The turnaround time for teams to focus exclusively on free agency would end up being quick. Wojnarowski reports that the league’s free agency period would kick off on October 18, and keeping in line with a change that went into effect last year, the window for deals to be agreed to would open at 6 p.m. EST.
Free agency negotiations will start at 6 PM on October 18, per sources. (Not a minute sooner, or that would be tampering, of course) https://t.co/gFsfDA0BGf
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 20, 2020
There are still a number of questions about how the timeline will work for the NBA over the coming months, even beyond the fact that Florida looks ripe for being the United States’ next COVID hotspot right before teams are preparing to get situated at Disney and the questions about when the season can start in response to that. Things like a start date for next season and a potential “Summer League,” for instance, are still up in the air. But now, we know when we’ll see the two biggest days on the NBA’s offseason calendar.
Juneteenth turned out to be one of the more active days for the music industry since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The holiday was packed with new releases for fans to enjoy throughout the day, concluding that night with a Verzuz battle between John Legend and Alicia Keys. DaBaby contributed to the day by hosting a “Black Lives BEEN Mattered” panel in his hometown of Charlotte, where he spoke about police reform and systemic racism.
“[This is] an opportunity to give people whose voices aren’t heard, whose voices don’t reach a million people, the opportunity to be heard,” DaBaby said before describing his own experiences with local police officers. This included his highly-publicized late-2019 arrest, in which he received a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge.
“I have had my own experiences with the police. It’s time to have a serious conversation about police reform and systemic racism in our city. Black lives been mattered and always will matter,” he said. “Why have 20 cops tried to find someone who is trying to do their job when you have real bad things going on?”
After being urged to use his platform to speak to the younger generation, DaBaby said, “I need to be educated on voting to speak for these kinds of people,” he said, before making closing statements… I want to end this by extending an offer to try to put something together routinely like this. Where we can bring blank notebook paper and pens and clipboards and try to move forward.”
Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden, Charlotte City Councilman Braxton Winston, and former Carolina Panther Thomas Davis also joined DaBaby for the open discussion.
