Austin Invites Atlantans To Dance Down Benefit Black Carpet

5:44 pm April 20, 2009, by Richard Eldredge

Given the current economic conditions, Atlanta producer Dallas Austin went in search of a fresh groove for his annual Don’t Stop the Music public schools music-program benefit.

“The times are really a trip this year,” Austin tells Buzz. “We had to change things up.”

Austin’s solution for his upcoming May 16 black carpet Dallas Austin Foundation benefit event at a private Buckhead residence? He’s scrapped the formality and hired his favorite Atlanta retro funk DJ, Romeo Cologne for a dignified dance party.

For years, local music fans have been digging Cologne’s vintage soul music at his weekly residencies at The Clermont Lounge and the Star Bar.

“This year, we’re losing the tables, the dinner and the long, boring speeches,” previewed Austin with a laugh. “This year, we’re just gonna get down!”

Among Austin’s many famous friends on the guest list: Sean “Diddy” Combs, Jermaine Dupri, “L.A.” Reid, Outkast and Russell Simmons.

Tickets are $150 apiece and the dress is black and/or white attire. Austin says to think classic Hollywood. Austin advises that the ladies bring a wardrobe change for their feet as well.

“It’s OK to show off those fancy designer high heels on the carpet but you’re gonna need some sneakers too!” Austin explains.

The money raised will continue the efforts of Austin’s Don’t Stop the Music program that has supplied 10 metro area public schools with tricked-out recording studios where students write, record, perform and produce their own material.

The foundation’s namesake himself occasionally drops in for a listen.

“They have the same stuff I use when I’m in the studio,” explains Austin. “My goal is for this to become a curriculum-based program. I want these kids to get a letter grade the same way the kids who play trombone in the band get a letter grade.”

Austin says his mentoring sessions with the students remain incredibly gratifying.

Says Austin: “You walk in there and you can see their dreams floating around them every day. That’s a wild thing to see.”

For tickets and more info: www.dallasaustinfoundation.org/

Italian Added To Joel’s Menu

Some local foodie jaws unhinged Monday when the latest e-mail from Joel Restaurant hit their in boxes. The seven-year-old ritzy French brasserie and Mediterranean and Asian-influenced restaurant opened by chef Joel Antunes announced its new Thursday “Pizza & Beer Night.”
In the e-mail, Joel reps informed loyal diners that the pies and suds “will be offered on the terrace and in the bar only. Enjoy a tasty small pizza for $6, large for $10.” Beers, meanwhile, will be half-price.

Our take? Anything it takes to keep the doors open will likely be embraced by the Northside Parkway restaurant’s many fans. Plus, the scrappy restaurant is accustomed to adverse economic conditions. Atlantans will recall Joel first opened its doors to the public less than a month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Funny Farm Shutters

The Funny Farm Comedy Club in Roswell had its last laugh Sunday after more than eight years and an estimated 250,000 patrons.
The comedy club was part of Startime Entertainment, a complex which included a miniature golf course, Go Karts, a video arcade, a sports bar and batting cages. Funny Farm manager Marshall Chiles said the operation was in debt and could no longer pay its bills.
The Funny Farm itself was the most successful component of Startime, Chiles said, but it alone could not carry the load anymore.

On Sunday, more than 30 comics showed up to bid the club farewell and reminisce on stage about what impact the club had on their careers.
Kenney Johnson, who went by the name “Big Kenney” on stage and taught comedy classes at the Funny Farm, was given the honors to close out the four-hour show Sunday night. “It was frustrating to see the place shut down due to no fault of its own,” he said Monday.

Johnson gave kudos to Chiles for running a top-notch operation, one that took care of its employees, its customers and the talent.

For now, Chiles will be operating the Laughing Skull Lounge in Midtown, a smaller venue he opened a couple of months ago. And he is entertaining offers to place the Funny Farm in a different location, preferably near the Funny Farm location.
Quote of the Day

“The reason there have been sequels and prequels is that everybody wanted these two characters together. Well, everyone except Margaret Mitchell.”

— Film critic and “Frankly My Dear” author Molly Haskell explaining the eternal appeal of doomed “Gone with the Wind” couple Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler at the Margaret Mitchell House Saturday night.

Overscene

“Rescue Me” actor Denis Leary dining with friends at the Four Seasons in Midtown. Leary and his “Rescue Me” co-stars Adam Ferrara and Lenny Clarke were in town for a stand-up gig at the Fox Theatre.

Celebrity Birthdays

Actor Charles Grodin is 74. Singer Iggy Pop is 62. Actress Patti LuPone is 60. Singer Robert Smith of The Cure is 50. Actor-director John Cameron Mitchell (”Hedwig and the Angry Inch”) is 46. Actor James McAvoy (”The Last King of Scotland,” “The Chronicles of Narnia”) is 30.

Contributing: Rodney Ho and news services.

Have an item for Buzz? E-mail it to buzz@ajc.com. Now follow Buzz Central updates on Twitter. Go to twitter.com and search “PeachBuzz.”

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‘From the future, a long time ago’
By Mark Ellwood
Published: March 14 2009 00:30 | Last updated: March 14 2009 00:30

In the past decade writer-producer Dallas Austin has been the creative force behind hits such as “Unpretty” by TLC, “Push The Button” by the Sugababes and “Just Like a Pill” by Pink. He has also produced films, including “Drumline” and “ATL”. His newest venture is a menswear line, The Rowdy Collection. He lives in Georgia, US, with his three sons, aged 14, 11 and six.

How many homes do you own?
One now but when I was building my house I didn’t want to be around it, because I’d drive people crazy, so I had to get out of town. It took three years to build and at one point I had places in New York, Los Angeles and Miami.

Where is your place?
Ten minutes outside Atlanta in Sandy Springs. It’s funny because I used to come to this neighbourhood as a kid. The governor’s mansion is here and the affluent homes and I used to ride through and see the cars and houses, thinking: “Man, one day I want to live in that neighbourhood.”

You were deeply involved in every aspect of the house. It’s very personal.
I’ve loved architecture since I was a kid. When I started to build my home I wanted a round house for some reason. I wanted it to be timeless, not white, square and stucco. So I met with this architect out of Portland, Michael Czysz, who’d done a studio for Lenny Kravitz, and is a different kind of designer. I took him to look at places like Nike Town stores and Frank Lloyd Wright houses. I kept saying: “I want this house to look like it’s from the future, a long time ago” – veryBarbarella or 2010.

It sounds like it was a gruelling process.
We just started knocking out designs back and forth. I was looking at Frank Lloyd Wright homes, the Guggenheim, lots of Gehry, classic architecture. After two or three years we had 12 plans, zeroed in on two we really liked and then modified one. I wanted it to be sleek, like something had landed in the neighbourhood.

MY FAVOURITE THINGS
Art, Ali and Adidas
My Jane Fonda Andy Warhol.She’s a good friend, I love her and I wish I could have married her. There’s no one who has as much spunk and heart. I bought this painting at her auction for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty.
My Muhammad Ali book[published by] Taschen.
Adidas 35th anniversary shell toes. They come in a white box and were given to only 35 people. On Ebay they were $8,000-$10,000.
The Philippe Starck chair, the burnt one in black. I got in on that early. I’ll sit on it sometimes and meditate a little bit.
My Todd Murphy painting of a girl behind a cherry blossom tree. When I saw it, I fell in love. I would go and look at it for hours.
You definitely managed that. But there must have been huge challenges.
The house is built so differently [from a standard home]. The kitchen is upstairs and the pool is upstairs. There was the technical challenge of running pipes between air conditioning ducts between the floor and ceiling downstairs. I didn’t want gutters, so instead I made a retention pond around the bedroom and elevated the property about six feet.

No pipes and gutters? That’s very Frank Lloyd Wright.
It’s great. The water falls off the side of the house and you wake up every day to a huge pile of water. My feng shui is right, even though I wasn’t thinking about that when I did it.

Any other influences?
I love Santiago Calatrava. I looked at his bridges when I was planning my house, for the dynamic and the curve. There’s only one straight wall in the house, down the hallway. That’s where I have art by [funk musician] George Clinton. I have about 50 pieces. People don’t realise he’s a painter. He’s colourblind and that explains something [about his work].

What other art do you have?
Todd Murphy is my favourite painter. I have tons and tons of his stuff. Elton John has 25 [works]. I take photographs myself and I’m going to have a show this year. I take my pictures and put them to music.

The house has one very distinctive feature, curved walls aside – that nook part way up the main stairs that you call the cubbyhole.
I wanted one because I saw it in a 1960s book. And I saw one at Lenny [Kravitz]’s house. I thought: “Man, I want one of those. Why don’t we just put it up the steps?”

Do you use it?
Yeah, man, the sound in there is amazing. I like to watch movies in there.

You were as involved with the interiors as with the architecture.
I didn’t work with an interior designer. I’m one of those nuts who takes a U-Haul [rental moving van] and backs it up to a store. I don’t want to wait six weeks for things. When I first started it was a lot colder, with terrazzo floors, but I thought: “You know what, this is too Palm Springs or Miami.” I wanted the place to be warm – Asian fusion design with a bedroom that was like old 1970s shag-funk.

The round bed is definitely very Shaft.
I’ve wanted a round bed ever since I saw [1978 comedy] Corvette Summer . I bought it from Minotti and it’s really comfortable. My bedroom is my favourite room. It’s 2,000 sq ft. A big part of the house belongs to the kids but this is my domain. When I come in from out of town, there’s nothing like walking into my bedroom. It’s like a serenity pod instead of an iPod.

Where else in the world would you live?
I love Brazil. That’s one of my favourite getaways. Stateside, I’d definitely want to have a place in Miami. London is another of my favourite places. It’s like I belong there, growing up at the point where most UK music was pop in the US, like Depeche Mode and U2. In the past few years I did a lot of work over there – the Sugababes, Anastacia, Duran Duran. I didn’t want to do “VIP/champagne” records in the US.

I’ve read that you think of your interior aesthetic as very hotel-inspired.
I love Philippe Starck’s work, the way he combines modern with a tad of Gothic. My house is patterned after this hotel I’ve been trying to do for years called Om, which is kind of a spiritual hotel – a night-time boudoir lit up in different colours. I dream of owning my own hotel.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

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I know you do, which is why i’ve created http://www.rowdy.tv. Create a profile. Upload your demos. They are guaranteed to be heard. Who knows, you may become the new Rowdy Records artist!

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I never thought of the weekend as something that would get the best of me. But I guess the ‘weak-end’ is already telling you that you’re not on the strongest end. Funny, if you’re on the weak-end of anything else, that probably means you suck at it. But the weakend that starts with Friday seems to make everyone inferior. Maybe it’s because we need a break? Some people think of a break as being broken. Me? I’m mixed, and a little confused. So I decided to take this semester off and get a job at a really cool clothing store. Nothing too heavy because I’ve been looking forward to today, which is Friday. My birthday. And right now, I’m booking my first appointment to all my answers for 8 am Monday morning. Which means, I’m seeing my psycho artist without my mom for the first time. But as for now, I don’t want anything to get in the way of my partying.

It is my birthday, ya know? The cool part is hanging out with Juan. He’s part of Dallas’ crew. Whenever we go out with them, the go to the coolest parties… and everything is laid out. As it should be…

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO DAISY

“8 Dazeaweakend is a reality experience based on girl I knew in Atlanta – I met her with my cousin Juan, hanging at after-parties and stuff.”

8 Dazeaweakend represents Austin’s first foray as a solo artist. Recorded under the moniker The Dallas Austin Experience, 8 Dazeaweakend is without equal. Eleven new songs (plus a cover of T. Rex’s “Children of the Revolution”) are interwoven into a short film narrating the true coming of age story of Daisy, a real-life friend of Dallas’ from the Atlanta party scene. Says Austin: “8 Dazeaweakend is a reality experience based on girl I knew in Atlanta – I met her with my cousin Juan, hanging at after-parties and stuff.”

The album features production by Austin as well as guest appearances by the legendary George Clinton and Big Gipp (of Goodie Mob) as well as Dallas’ Rowdy Records artists Novel (Capitol), Colin Munroe (Universal Motown) and others. 8 Dazeaweakend demonstrates Austin’s love for a wide range of music, and features an eclectic mix of old school funk, modern pop, dance, southern hip hop and r&b.

“Dallas is a true innovator and a visionary,” said Universal Motown President Sylvia Rhone. “He has put his unique stamp on an extraordinary array of hit music over the past two decades. So it comes as no surprise that his long-overdue solo debut is a brilliant, groundbreaking project that crosses boundaries, both musical and visual, to tell a compelling real-life story. I am very happy to welcome Dallas to the Universal Motown family and to kick off our new relationship with such a fantastic album.”