Best Cultural Event

Best Festival That's Not St. Patrick's Day

Savannah Music Festival

It's been eight years since Rob Gibson rode into town on a white horse and declared his intention to widen Savannah's cultural spectrum. And he's done it, bringing world-class musicians from every genre, field and stream. Not only is it musically enriching, the Savannah Music Festival is a class act all the way - the Wall Street Journal wrote about it, the Times of London and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution raved about it - aficionados who come here to hear violins and cellos often leave raving about the incredible bluegrass or blues acts they heard. That's something that Gibson, a musical Johnny Appleseed, is particularly proud of.

Runner-up, Cultural Event: St. Patrick's Day

Runner-up, Festival: Oktoberfest

Best Indie Film Venue

The Sentient Bean

Jim Reed's Psychotronic Film Series continues to showcase the good, the bad and the bizarre every Wednesday night on the coffeehouse's pull-down screen. Weirdness reigns supreme at Psychotronic - and the Sentient Bean.

Runner-up: Lucas Theatre

Best Movie Theatre

Victory Square

Despite the fact that this Trademark Cinemas outlet is no longer using its actual box office (you buy your tickets at the popcorn counter), readers voted it their favorite among Savannah multiplexes.

Runner-up: Carmike 10

Best Local Theatre Production

Best Local Theatre Director

The Diary of Anne Frank

Directed by Benjamin Wolfe

The beloved drama about Dutch Jews in hiding during the Holocaust got an intense, in-your-face treatment from the Little Theatre of Savannah in October. "A big part of my challenge was to see if I could make it fresh," says Benjamin Wolfe, who directed the play from a mid-1990s Broadway revival script.

"My big point was to really have the audience right there with them in the Annex. Working with my set designer, we were able to create the world with a three-quarters thrust stage, so the audience really felt like they were in the situation with the people."

The claustrophobic world Wolfe created was all-inclusive. "I had the performers stay onstage and live in the Annex during intermission," he says. "The audience would be getting up to get their drinks, or their popcorn, but the whole time everybody was going about their life in the Annex. It really created the environment, and I think that's key."

The cast, which included Nicole Pearlman as Anne and Jeroy Hannah as her father, Otto, wasn't sure about giving up their own intermission breaktime. "I had some balking about initially," Wolfe says. "but once they thought about the fact that it was Anne Frank, they got on board with it totally."

The AASU graduate is now the performing arts director at Hilton Head Preparatory School, but he comes to Savannah often and says he has plans to direct here again in the fall. - BDY

Runner-up, Production: Savannah Children's Theatre

Runner-up, Director: Jeff DeVincent

Best Local Actor

Ryan McCurdy

After one of his busiest years in Savannah, Ryan McCurdy is packing it in, at the end of this summer, and heading to New York to try his luck in the mondo theater game.

Yeah, OK, he said the same thing last year. And he never left.

"I really am biting the bullet and closing down the lease in August," laughs the 26-year-old stage chameleon. "And I also didn't renew some of my work contracts, so if I don't go through with it this time, I'm going to be looking a bit more miserable on streetcorners, I suppose."

The Charlotte native arrived eight years ago to study film and theater at SCAD. After graduation, he started the Savannah Actor's Theatre, which morphed into Cardinal Rep ... and promptly shut down.

That didn't stop McCurdy from acting, singing, dancing and playing musical instruments with just about every theater group - large and small - in Savannah.

In 2009, he was in An Apology, Urinetown the Musical, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and The Putnam County Spelling Bee.

McCurdy was also the musical director for Pippin, The Rocky Horror Show. Holiday Cabaret and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

"I'm a person that stagnates in any type of routine," he says. "I've hired myself into things I don't know how to do yet, just so I can develop them.

"I'm technically a magician, but I was hired for three gigs before I knew how to do a legitimate magic trick. It's a lot about improv-ing your way through any situation."

As for Savannah's theater scene, McCurdy still believes in his original Cardinal Rep credo: Give the audience something good every time, and they'll come to trust you.

"It's a city full of talented people," he says, "and they enjoy working together. There's no problem with participants, it's just in the maintenance and selling of product to the audience. It's a strange demographic to sell to."

He remembers our long-lasting City Lights troupe. "Everyone's trying to be the next City Lights," he stresses. "I think it's going to take stuff like what JinHi's doing with Indigo Arts. We're going to have to break the mold - I think the audience has moved on - until we can kind of re-create what the performance arts are here." -- BDY

Runner-up: Christopher Blair

Best Local Actress

JinHi Soucy Rand

The fairy godmother of Savannah theater might be its savior this year. As the founder of the Indigo Arts Center, Rand has thrown open a bright new avenue, full of promise for the performing arts. In 2009, before Indigo even existed, she was onstage herself in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Love Letters.

Runner-up: Grace Diaz Tootle

Best Local Author

Mary Kay Andrews

Savannahians have branded Mary Kay Andrews as a Savannah writer ever since her novel Savannah Blues was released in 2002, even though the former newspaper reporter hasn't lived here full time since the 1980's.

"I write with such affection for Savannah," says Andrews. "I went to work for the Savannah Morning News in 1976, right out of college as a newlywed, and our daughter was born there. We lived there twice and have a home there now [on Tybee Island.] And probably I know more about Savannah than your typical person whose family didn't come over with Oglethorpe. I was a newspaper reporter and you have to get under the skin of a place."

Andrews, whose real name is Kathy Hogan Trocheck, got the scoop on Savannah while on staff at the local paper, and then for out of town papers in the late 1970's and early 1980's. She covered two of the now famous Jim Williams murder trials for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution and then left Savannah for Atlanta. In 1991, Andrews ended her news career to become a novelist, so that she could work at home while her children were young.

Her first eight books were Atlanta-based mysteries published under her real name. Since 2002 she's had seven novels published using her better known pseudonym, in a genre she describes as "chick lit for adults."

Savannah or Tybee is the setting for three of her "Andrews" books-Savannah Blues, Savannah Breeze, and Blue Christmas.

Savannah Blues, the first novel she wrote as Mary Kay Andrews, set the tone for all that have followed-fast paced, funny, set in southern locales. Comedies of manners that use G-rated mysteries as the focal point for the Lucy-and-Viv-like antics of the characters.

Five of her novels - Hissy Fit, Savannah Breeze, Blue Christmas, Deep Dish and her latest, The Fixer Upper -- have graced the New York Times bestseller list.

In January, a "Fixer Upper" computer game was released, based on the book, that as of last week ranked as the ninth most popular game on the website Iwin.com.

These days, Andrews' Savannah-area base is beachside. For almost three years she's had a space selling collectibles and vintage items at Seaside Sisters on Tybee Island. "My friends [at Seaside Sisters] asked me if I wanted to have a booth. Of course I had enough stuff in my basement for five booths. I am a habitual junker."

In 2008, while writing The Fixer Upper, she and her husband of 33 years bought a house on Tybee to use as a family second home and a writing retreat. She furnished it with more finds from her obsessive junking junkets.

"We rent it when we're not using it. I wrote a story about that house that's in the June issue of Better Homes and Gardens. It's a total love letter to Tybee."

So, what are the ups and downs of life as a bestselling fiction writer?

"I can buy better quality junk now," says Andrews.

"The down side is there are expectations. Your next book has to be better than the last book. It has to sell more copies. You raise the bar for yourself, which is good. The pressure is on. But at the same time, I love what I do.

"I feel blessed, even when I'm bitching and moaning. I am doing what I dreamed I'd do as a kid. I'm an author." -- RWG

Runner-up: Adam Davies

Best Museum

Jepson Center for the Arts

With more than 7,500 square feet of gallery space, the Telfair Museum's new (it opened its doors in 2006) "contemporary art space" features major traveling exhibitions of contemporary art and installations of works from the permanent collection.

Runner-up: Mighty Eighth

Best Art Gallery

Chroma

"The mission of Chroma Art Gallery is to be a leader in the presentation and promotion of contemporary visual arts within the southeastern region of the United States." So reads the mission statement of this nearly 9-year-old venue, opened and still managed by Jan Clayton-Pagratis and Lori Keith Robinson. Just around the corner from Ellis Square (which didn't exist last year, when Chroma also won in this category), the gallery is currently featuring works by David E. Smith and David Kaminsky.

Runner-up: DeSoto Row

Best Visual Art Event

Sidewalk Arts

Chalk it up to the beautiful weather, or the zeal of hundreds of SCAD students who create colorful chalk paintings every April on the sidewalks of Forsyth Park - this is one of the year's best-attended shows (and it's certainly the least formal).

Runner-up: Telfair Art Fair

Best Multimedia Art Event

Telfair's PULSE

When it comes to rocking multimedia art, Pulse, the 11-day event hosted at the Telfair Museums' Jepson Center, leaves no stone unturned.

This year's exhibits showcased interactive design, inflatable art, robotic musicians and a performance by a band using Nintendo Wii controllers, among numerous other nationally and internationally known artists.

The Telfair's Senior Curator of Education, Harry Delorme, was pleased with how the festival turned out.

"It went great. It was the biggest year ever," he says. "We offered more programs than ever and it turned out about 4,000 people came through."

Although many of the artists who were part of this year's Pulse are working with new materials and emerging technology, the secret of the festival's success is relatively simple.

"It really helps having great audio-visual personnel to work with - that's one very important aspect of it," says Delorme, who along with the tech staff, also gives a lot of credit to the local artists who were involved. "We're fortunate to have artists locally working with technology and new media. That's another important component."

Having the opportunity to show case work from local artists is something that Delorme is particularly proud of with Pulse, and he hopes that the festival's success will foster more local exploration.

"There's nothing like this happening in the Southeast," he says. "I like seeing this new direction in art and what artists are doing with new materials and technology. It's a way of showcasing that and encouraging this kind of work here."

While it's an honor to be chosen for the Connect Savannah's ‘Best of Savannah' list, Delorme is hoping this is a stepping stone to even greater accolades and recognition for the unique festival.

"I'd like to see Savannah get recognized outside of our area for this festival, and to develop more of a following where people come to Savannah for this event," says Delorme. "It's a pretty rare thing. It's not something you find in other Southeastern cities or museums." - PR

Runner-up: Sidewalk Arts

Best Gallery Show/Reception

'Where the Winged Things Are'

Photographer Carly Jurach blended women with colorfully-plumed male birds for this eye-opening exhibition, held in April at Indigo Arts Center. The enormous bird-woman prints were accompanied by the original costume designs, the costumes themselves, and a box ‘o beaks designed by Jurach and worn by the avian models.

Runner-up: DeSoto Strut

Best Local Painter

Anna Fox Ryan

Our cover girl this year, Anna Fox Ryan, came to Savannah from her native Virginia for a degree in graphic design, but her passion is for exploring the tenuous relationship between the environment and the industry of man, through her thought-provoking oils and illustrations.

"I started focusing on oils specifically because it's more permanent than some of digital works currently being created," she says. "I had a message I wanted to communicate. I started thinking about the environment and it really evolved from there into a look at the very broad scale of energies. Everything from electricity and oil use to function on a daily basis."

Ryan is also interested in the "energy of the individual and the soul and the capabilities we all have," she says. "The life force itself. I want to explore what happens after we pass, after the physical body is gone."

Sadly for the Savannah art world, Ryan is planning a move to Philadelphia, where her husband is enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Ryan herself is hitting the ground running in the City of Brotherly Love.

"I've been in touch with some agencies and galleries," she says. "Shows are starting to line up." - JM

Runner-up: Ray Ellis

Best Local Photographer

Christine Hall

For portraiture, wedding and event photography, Hall has been Savannah's best of the best for several years. In 2008, she was voted Kodak's Photographer to Watch.

Runner-up: Jennifer Grayson

Best Fashion Event

SCAD Fashion Show

Just 30 SCAD students are chosen, by jury, to participate in this tony event at the Trustees Theater. Held just a week ago, the 2010 event gave venerable designer Diane von Furstenberg the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Best Live Music Concert

Best Savannah Music Festival Event

Wilco

Within minutes of the announcement that Midwestern Americana merchants Wilco would play the Savannah Music Festival, the news spread like wildfire on Facebook and Twitter. Tickets, needless to say, didn't last much longer than that.

Certainly one of the most anticipated concerts of the last several years in Savannah, the pot was sweetened by what might be the bargain of the century: Tickets as low as $35 for a band known for its three-hour-plus, Springsteen-esque marathon shows.

While internet chatter after the show seemed to revolve around the typical hipster debate du jour about who was a "real fan" and who was just a poser, the band itself couldn't care less: Jeff Tweedy, Nels Cline and the gang delivered the goods in grand style, with a nearly four-hour show that blended arena outreach and intimate venue coziness (including Tiffany lamps), complete with a quasi-acoustic set down front as a middle section.

The only downsides -- the Johnny Mercer Theatre's wretched acoustics and the Civic Center's continued focus on selling as much alcohol as possible in as short a timeframe as possible -- were certainly no fault of the band or the Festival, just another reminder of the desperate need for an upgrade of the facility, both physically and strategically.

For the Savannah Music Festival itself, the Wilco show was a watershed moment of sorts: The first really high-profile, deadly serious attempt to expand the event's appeal to a decidedly younger, alt-friendly demographic. Judging by the turnout and the buzz, the decision was not only a success but hopefully a harbinger of more such decisions to come. That said, this will be a tough act to follow. -- JM

Runner-up, Concert: SCAD New Alumni Concert

Runner-up, SMF: Kristina Train

Best Local Classical Event

Picnic in the Park

A longstanding symphonic-party tradition, this is when the city's top orchestra fills Forsyth Park with music, merriment and munchies. In 2009, the band gave the Picnic a Johnny Mercer theme.

Best All-Around Local Musician

Best Local Blues Artist

Eric Culberson

For 20 years and counting, Culberson's been the electric guitarist to beat here in his hometown. He was, he admits, a latecomer to the blues, and in fact the Eric Culberson Blues Band was known, for a long time, as EROK - until he fell hard for B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and started working his back backwards. And Culberson's soon-to-drop fourth CD has more of a "classic rock" flavor, so there might be yet another name change in his immediate future.

Runner-up, All-Around: Ben Tucker

Runner-up, Blues: Bottles ‘N' Cans

Best Local Vocalist

Roger Moss

The co-founder and artistic director of the Savannah Children's Choir is a perennial winner in this category. That's because he cab genre-jump between jazz, smooth R&B and the classics without batting an eye.

Runner-up: Huxsie Scott

Best Local Country/Americana Band

Train Wrecks

Yes, Jason Bible and the "Johnny Cash on amphetamines" band is still gigging pret'near every night (they did a private show at Paula Deen's new mansion just last week) and yes, the band's long-awaited second CD is almost finished.

Runner-up: Damon & The Shitkickers

Best Local Jam Band

Turtle Folk

Singer Michael "Turtle" McCormick has been out front of this "whenever we get around to playing" jam outfit since 2003. The occasional band mixes psychedelia, trance, bluegrass, roots and rock, in true Deadhead fashion. Sometimes you'll catch McCormick as "Turtle & Friends." In either case, anything can happen - and it usually does.

Runner-up: Junkyard Angel

Best Local Acoustic Artist

Dare Dukes

"Idiosyncratic" best describes this Minnesota-born singer/songwriter, who divides his time between Savannah (his wife is here) and New York City (he has a job there). Dukes has an unparalleled melodic sense, a gift for heart-wrenching lyrics, and the ability to weave them together around quirky, unusual pop/folk arrangements that literally don't sound like anybody else.

Runner-up: Tim Burke & Steve Horton

Best Local Punk Band

Cusses

Guitarist Bryan Harder, drummer Brian Lackey and singer Angel Bond drive home the thrash with explosive energy and a finely-developed feel for power pop. And they do it without a bass player. Why take half an hour when you can say it all in a 3-minute song?

Runner-up: Liquid Ginger (!)

Best Local Hardcore/Metal Band

Baroness

It's been one helluva year for the dizzy deans of Savannah-based indie metal. The band's polymusical Blue Record was praised to the skies in Spin, Pitchfork, Decibel, Hammer and other top-line publications. The band is currently crossing the country on a tour with Mastodon, and they'll play Bonnaroo in June, followed by a swing through Europe and Scandinavia. This may well be the Savannah band to go big-time.

Runner-up: Broken Tyme

Best Local Rock Band

Liquid Ginger

Ginger Fawcett bought a ticket for the roller coaster 10 years ago, by answering an ad in Connect Savannah. A fledgling rock ‘n' roll band was looking for a lead singer.

Fawcett, a native North Carolinian who'd just arrived in town, answered the ad.

Ten years later, the ride hasn't even slowed down. "We came out really strong," Fawcett says, "and for years we played, played, played."

Liquid Ginger is an old-school rock ‘n' roll band - with Rick Betz and Barr Nobles on guitars, Zak Nash on drums and Derrick Huff playing bass, Fawcett has the Pat Benatar/Deborah Harry role. She's a charismatic and eminently watchable frontwoman, the band's main songwriter, and a full-throated vocalist.

The latter is not surprising, because she's also a professional vocal coach (her organization is called Savannah Sings).
A couple of personnel changes that took time to resolve themselves slowed Liquid Ginger down - a little - over the last couple of years, but Fawcett says the band is beginning to play out more and more, and will soon be back at full itinerary.

They're working on their third CD of all-original music, to be released on Oct. 10 (it celebrates the 10th anniversary, and it's to be called 10-10-10).

"I'm so happy with the way things are going with Liquid Ginger," Fawcett says, pointing out that they've added an onstage harmony vocalist.

"It's really just coming together well, and changing the whole dynamics of Liquid Ginger altogether, and I'm loving it."
Fawcett, who's extremely acting in community and charity events, says she's way past pining for the "big time," the idea that her band could get famous and eventually leave Savannah.

"Well, I've always wanted to do it, but I don't think the opportunity's ever really presented itself," she says. "I've not pushed it completely to the max, because I've really enjoyed where I am. I'm a mom of two.

"I've kind of enjoyed being a local celebrity, so to speak, and getting that but not really pushing it too far. Because I see where people go with it, and I don't know that I want that life."

She had worked in concert and event promotion - backstage stuff - before singing on as the lead singer of the rock ‘n' roll band named for her.

"Back when I started with the band, it was my dream. I just said ‘this is my year, this is my year.' Every year was my year.

"Now, I'm really happy with where I am, and what we've achieved. And being the best band in Savannah, that's not too shabby. I don't think that I would change anything that I've done." -- BDY

Runner-up: Turtle Folk

Best Local Funk/R&B/Soul Band

A Nickel Bag of Funk

Vocalist Leslie Adele and guitarist Johan Harvey lead the exemplary NBOF through tough funk, sinewy R&B, creative jazz and something that feels an awful lot like authentic rock/psychedelia. "Because nobody ever told me that there are any rules," Adele says, "I don't really have any."

Runner-up: Voodoo Soup

Best Local Jazz Artist

Ben Tucker

The venerable standup bassist and composer is 80, but even if he were half as old, he'd still be Savannah's grand old man of jazz. There's just no one who comes close in terms of vision, dexterity or creative fire.

Runner-up: Silver Lining

Best Local Club DJ and the Club They're At

Beanasaurus Rex/Seed Eco-Lounge

SCAD sound design student Richard Bean keeps the dance tunes flowing at this brand-new (and extremely popular) Montgomery Street nightspot.

Runner-up: Analog Kid

Best Local Electronica Artist

Sunglasses

The duo of Samuel "8000 Bam Bam" Cooper and Brady "Baby Seal" Keehn have undoubtedly left their mark on Savannah's music scene, but they are confused about why Sunglasses is what has gotten all the recognition.

"If you noticed, while we were in Savannah we played all types of music," says the duo by email, listing the groups they were part of, including Hula Hoop, Food Coloring, MK2, Aux Arc and others. "We find it interesting how Sunglasses, the newest of all projects, is chosen over any of the other types of music that we make."

Part of the reason is probably because the viral success of Sunglasses' debut video "Whiplash," which was directed by Cooper, won them serious buzz in the blogosphere and a record deal followed within a matter of weeks.

During their last days in Savannah, before departing for New York City to begin work on their self-titled debut, which is scheduled for release June 11 on Lefse Records, the pair played a series of packed farewell shows and then left town with no money.

"We have been running around NYC, playing shows, shopping on 5th Avenue, having brunch at Tavern on the Green, regularly attending Broadway shows and then throwing up blood on Bleecker Street," they report.

Stylistically, they describe themselves as "Avante Doo-Woop," which works as well as any other vague genre descriptor, but doesn't begin to encapsulate the swirling, bass-heavy, psychedelic electro-pop they have mastered.

Although they are off living the good life in the big city, there are still plenty of things the pair misses about life in Savannah, including Angel's BBQ, the Eastman Gun Show, Mike Bailey, the parking deck next to WG's and "riding our bikes drunk in the rain at night down Bull Street while listening to "Wipe Out" on a tape player." - PR

Runner-up: Ed Nolan

Best Local Hip Hop Rap Group

Dope Sandwich

It started off as a loose collective of rappers, DJs, B-boys and artists, but with the recent release of the Union of Sacred Monsters CD, Dope Sandwich - with lyrics by multi-talented Savannah rappers Basik Lee, Knife, Righteous and the recently-moved-away Zone-D and Blue Collar - Dope Sandwich tightened up, got serious and made a profound musical statement.

Runner-up: Electric Park

Best Local Spoken Word Artists

AWOL

Tony Jordan and wife Davena run this multi-platform non-profit that gives area youth a creative outlet - through music, film, theater,.and most especially spoken word poetry slams. They do "Therapy Session," a free 7 p.m. slam, every third Sunday at the Sentient Bean.

Runner-up: Spitfire Poetry Group