When Alexandria Dugan rang up the purchases of a male and female customer at her Old Northside stationery store recently, she thought the guy’s face and voice were familiar.

“As they were checking out I was like, ‘Oh, he kind of looks like Tom Hanks. He kind of sounds like Tom Hanks.” And then they left and I was like, ‘I think that was Tom Hanks,” said Dugan, owner of Semantics Paper Goods, 111 E. 16th St.

It wasn’t until more than a week later when her neighbor Dream Palace Books & Coffee posted to social media a photo of Hanks outside of the shop that she realized it really was the multi-Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker.

Hanks had hit up the Northside Indianapolis businesses on Sept. 28.

Dream Palace owner Taylor Lewandowski didn’t post the photo until last week. He said Hanks asked him not to post the photo for a while.

“He wanted us to wait a week. That was his request,” he said.

Both the shops are in the same building on the ground level.

Tom Hanks’ visit to Northside Indy shops

Hanks and his daughter, E.A. Hanks, had stopped in the bookstore and cafe after the stationery store; and Lewandowski said he nearly missed the visit while working in the back office.

His barista went to the office to report the sighting of Hollywood royalty.

“She came back and was just like, ‘I’m like 90% sure Tom Hanks came in here,” Lewandoski said.

He went out front to investigate and saw that two Dream Palace customers were outside talking with Hanks. That’s where Lewandowski met the actor, who asked about how the year-old shop started.

Hanks posed for photos with the Dream Palace barista and some students from nearby Herron High School across the street.

The encounter was brief, and Lewandowski said he suspects the Hanks didn’t stay long at the bookstore because folks started to recognize him.

He said Hanks told him another Indianapolis bookseller suggested they make a trip to Dream Palace. Dream Palace, in turn, directed Hanks to The Whispering Shelf, 414 N. College, but the actor never made it to that store.

Pink about Indy: Before her concert, Pink took her family to Conner Prairie’s Headless Horseman 🎃

While Hanks didn’t make a purchase at Dream Palace, he did buy a lot of stuff from the stationery store.

Hanks and daughter — E.A. Hanks is a writer — entered the shop in the afternoon.

“They didn’t really announce themselves or anything. They just came in and started shopping,” Dugan said.

The Hanks were in Semantics for about five minutes, picking out notebooks, letter writing paper, envelopes, pens and postcards, she said.

“They were pretty efficient shoppers. They kind of knew what they had in mind.”

What did Tom Hanks buy from indie Indianapolis stationery store Semantics?

Among the items Hanks took a liking to at the stationery store:

• Shorthand Task Pad Notebooks. Hanks bought several lined rule notebooks with checkboxes. Dugan said he wiped out her stock of forest green pads.

• Letter writing paper and matching envelopes from MD Paper Products, a Japanese brand.

Why was Tom Hanks in Indianapolis?

No word on what brought the actor and his daughter to Indy. The shop owners said they didn’t ask.

EA Hanks might make another trip to the Indy bookstore

Lewandowski said he hopes E.A. Hanks will return to Dream Palace to promote her book “The 10,” due out in 2025.

“She took my email down and said she’d like to do some kind of book signing or event here,” he said. “I hope she reaches out. That’d be great to have her come back and do something.”

Contact IndyStar reporter Cheryl V. Jackson at cheryl.jackson@indystar.com or 317-444-6264. Follow her on X.com: @cherylvjackson.

In the first home game of the NBA preseason for the Indiana Pacers, the Memphis Grizzlies won 120-116.

The Pacer could not seem to get the cogs churning, allowing the Grizzlies to score the first the game’s first eleven points. Ultimately, this run set the tone for the rest of the contest.

Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle noted the subpar performance in the first quarter.

“We made some progress in the second, third and fourth quarter,” Carlisle said. “The first quarter was very poor.”

The usual starters for the Pacers —  Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam and Aaron Nesmith — did not enter the game.

Grizzlies shooting guard Desmond Bane, a native of Richmond, IN., was off to a great start. Bane knocked down tough shots from midrange and beyond the arc.

Zach Edey, a product of Purdue University drafted earlier this year, asserted his game early. The Grizzlies forward led his team in the first half, tallying 13 points and three rebounds.

Carlisle spoke highly of Edey following the contest.

“He’s [Edey] is going to have impact,” Carlisle said. “Two-time National Player of the Year is a big deal. I have great respect for what he accomplished at Purdue. I have a lot of respect for what he did tonight. He put a will and [level of] physicality on the game that we did not match.”

Pacers veteran forward Myles Turner countered with own version of imposing play. Turner notched 12 points and eight rebounds in the first half. He did not play in the second half.

Obi Toppin and Andrew Nembhard contributed buckets of their own in the first half. The Pacers duo put forth eight and ten points respectively.

The Pacers came into the second half trailing 60-49. Despite a quiet first half, Pacers forward Bennedict Mathurin turned on the heat. Mathurin knocked down two crucial three-pointers in the third quarter. He scored ten points in the frame.

Edey continued where he left off in the first half. He stormed the lane throwing down thunderous dunks, ending the quarter with a team-high 23 points.

Bane matched Edey with 23 points of his own to end the contest.

Grizzlies forward Jake LaRavia, who attended Lawrence Central here in Indianapolis, also contributed to the stat sheet. LaRavia ended the game with seven points, eight rebounds and six assists.

The Pacers showed signs of life in the fourth quarter, shredding a 20-point deficit to as little as four. The heroics were led by Jerace Walker, who ended the contest with a team-high 15 points.

Walker spoke about his play following the contest.

“Once we got our fight, our legs into it, switched our mindset … we began to play more like ‘the Pacers,’” Walker said.

Pacers draft picks Cole Swider and Enrique Freeman were integral in a 16-2 run. Swider knocked down two catch-and-shoot three-pointers while Freeman lived up to his two-moniker, playing staunch defense.

The Pacers return to Gainbridge Fieldhouse Oct. 17 to face LaMelo Ball and the Charlotte Hornets.  They open the regular season against the Pistons, in Detroit, on Oct. 23.

Contact multi-media & senior sports reporter Noral Parham III at 317-762-7846 or via email at noralp@indyrecorder.com. Follow him on X @3Noral. For more sports from the Indianapolis Recorder, visit our archives.

“Can you smell the rain?” Owen Thomas asks. He sits on a couch flanked by two windows, a large, healthy ficus bonsai on the sill of each, shimmering against the backdrop of a brilliant, choppy gray sky. One window is open, and through it the smell of rain drifts, permeating and changing the atmosphere of the room. “There’s a word for that,” Thomas goes on, but it sits stubbornly on the tip of his tongue.

The word is petrichor, from the Greek roots “petra,” meaning stone, and “ichor,” or gods’ blood. The immersive, all-encompassing experience this phenomenon brings into the small, airy studio above Square Cat Vinyl on Virginia Avenue is emblematic of the creative agency and music label Thomas runs from the space with business partner Jared Sparkman—a venture they’ve aptly named Absorb.

Note: Stylistically, the period is included in the name—a carryover from Thomas’ solo album, Languages. {Or: Get Dark & Find Yourself.}, which boasts his playful relationship with language (along with a preponderance of deceptively upbeat songs about heartbreak in his signature contemplative, heartland rock style). The album’s release coincided with Thomas’ transition to running his own company, both coming on the heels of his 10 years as frontman of rock band The Elms, which called it quits in 2010.

The reason for The Elms’ breakup is simple, though at the time, with their fan base and popularity growing, it seemed the only direction for the four guys from rural Indiana and Missouri to go was up. Their last album together, The Great American Midrange, hit No. 18 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. They toured with Peter Frampton, their hit “Back to Indiana” was the official theme song of the 2010 Big Ten Conference, and they performed at Farm Aid alongside Willie Nelson and Neil Young. But, as Thomas states, “It just seemed like that’s what the planets were saying, that it was time for a new chapter.”

So, on they moved. Guitarist Thom Daugherty became a backing musician for Grammy-winning country stars The Band Perry. Bassist Nathan Bennett became a Realtor. Drummer Christopher, Thomas’ younger brother, started a family.

Thomas, who had always handled the identity work and design for The Elms’ shows, albums, and merch, began receiving requests from industry acquaintances to lend his keen artistic eye to their visual materials. The planets were talking again. He partnered with Sparkman, a filmmaker and friend from Seymour, Indiana, to start Absorb., with Thomas as creative director and Sparkman as producer. Twelve years later, the pair is still at it, flying under the radar while booking jobs with local and national acts.

According to Thomas, “The name Absorb. simply encapsulates what I hope happens when people see or hear our work. We hope that they’re truly affected by it and understand it in a clear, multisensory way.” A peek at the part of Absorb.’s website (absorbme.com) showcasing their creative agency work has that effect, with its white-on-black text and grid of still and moving graphics previewing their album art, merchandise, live shows, museum exhibits, and music and lyric videos. It’s hard not to feel like your eyes have been peeled open Ludovico Technique–style. But it’s the heady kind of sensory overload that makes you want to hang around and, well, absorb it all.

It matches Thomas’ kinetic personality. His well of entertainment business knowledge—all self-taught—is deep and gives him the air of someone who belongs in a bigger town, yet he has a distinctly Midwestern warmth. Sparkman is more laid-back. He’s the one with the eye for technical detail, who assembles the ingredients that make the magic real. Before Absorb., he worked in IT, but he says he’s always gravitated to creative work.

Photo courtesy Lissyelle Laricchia

Thomas and Sparkman’s design projects pair with music that runs the gamut of styles, from country to experimental rap, and superbly capture a range of moods and emotions. The art for duo Dream Chief’s hypnotic R&B/pop tune “Love Me Back” depicts the bittersweetness of infatuation through distorted closeups of satin-soft flowers. The bold typeface, monumental collages, and bright primary colors of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum’s 2022 exhibit Roadsters 2 Records conveys the thrill of the Indy 500 in its most innovative era, the 1960s and early ’70s. The Band Perry’s blacked-out 2017 performance of “Stay in the Dark” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, lit only by a circle of black-clad dancers holding bright spotlights, titillates with its suggestion of body parts and silhouettes glimpsed in the low light.

Image by Absorb

Along with the two others on their team, project manager Brianna Aragon and strategic partnerships manager Michael Slonim, Absorb. relies on the help of a slew of collaborators from around Indy and the U.S. “We’re counting on these people to bring in their own creative sensibilities, which we have massive respect for. It makes it easy to let go of control on something that you know they’re only going to elevate,” Thomas says, noting that all his old bandmates have played on Absorb. tracks.

Sparkman points out that Indy is special because people are far more supportive than in other places. “We’ve worked in New York. We’ve worked in LA. We’ve worked in Nashville. The thing about Indy [is that] the doors, when you knock, they get answered much more welcoming than others.”

Photo courtesy Owen Thomas

Indy residents will notice evidence of the local connections in scenes off the streets of the city. Look for landmarks on a driver-for-hire’s midnight journey in the video for Kishi Bashi’s dreamy “Can’t Let Go, Juno,” filmed in and around downtown. The driver’s weariness as he shuttles around fares who party, argue, and make out in his backseat is relatable to anyone who’s ever worked a weekend late shift, but it melts away in an instant as he observes a moment of purity between a mother and daughter. And folks in Fountain Square may recognize the streets Jon McLaughlin playfully soft-shoes down in one continuous take that makes up the bulk of the video for the achingly sweet, piano-driven “Why It Hurts.”

As for the label, which emerged out of the creative agency in 2020, Thomas and Sparkman emphasize that their focus is on developing artists whose desire is to build their careers thoughtfully and to explore and hone their craft before fully stepping out professionally. “They actually get to know us. It’s not only working together as a business, but it’s also a relationship,” says Absorb. artist Frank, who lounges on a couch in the studio next to another mononymous local artist, Bayem. Sparkman and Thomas have worked with both since 2020 and have supported them through transformations both personal and professional.

Frank is bubblier and more approachable than the impression given by her online persona, which is a little bit witchy, a little bit grunge, a little bit Debbie Harry updated with a full sleeve. Her collection of songs boasts various styles, but her most recent ones, the banger “Sick of Yourself” and the dark and angsty “Stupider,” have a raw, ’90s vibe hearkening to Hole or Liz Phair’s most memorable hits. After testing genres and landing where she’s most comfortable, she’s preparing to record her next single, “Stuck in Reno,” as of this writing, with a flight to Nevada to film the video already booked.

Letting an artist dabble in different styles seems counterintuitive when record labels usually expect them to demonstrate they can make the big bucks within a certain timeframe or be sidelined, but it’s exactly what Absorb. encourages. “The artist development process is a lot of feeling around in the dark and just learning who people are as artists and as humans over time,” Thomas says. “You’re not looking for something that’s fully forged out of the gate. Nothing is. No one is.”

While all labels have A&R—artist and repertoire—departments responsible for “developing” talent and preparing them to make albums, Absorb. follows a much slower, artist-directed strategy that values personal passion above hasty profits. According to Thomas, this helps avoid the all-too-common identity crisis many young performers eventually undergo when their sound and aesthetic are determined by the label. “They inevitably reach this point where it’s like, I’m the most famous person in the world, and nobody actually knows me,” Thomas says. “That’s when they begin a self-discovery process that takes a lot of time and can be disastrous on a person’s mental health.”

Next to Frank, Bayem is somewhat reserved, but there’s an elegant alertness behind the calm. While February’s “Regrets” is a throwback to the golden age of neo soul, down to the drippy gold lighting and open-front button-down he dons in the video, his most recent song, “Avalanche,” like most of his work, combines elements of R&B, contemporary pop, and electronic music, often with a heavy dose of synthy ’80s Eurodisco or electropop. This at times unexpected but always seamless integration of styles gives his songs powerful texture. The 2020 single “Pressure,” the perfect summer earworm with its irresistibly buoyant rhythm and video game tones, was featured in an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, while “Joyride” was in Hulu’s original film, Sex Appeal.

Despite being more established in his sound, Bayem didn’t perform live until this past April, when he played two sold-out shows at Lo-Fi Lounge. This measured approach was part of Thomas and Sparkman’s plan. “There was this constant preaching of just taking it a step at a time,” Bayem says. “[That] kind of solidified in my mind that before anything happens, I need to make sure that internally I’m the person I need to be to fully maximize that opportunity or just be a good steward over it,”

Thomas shares that Absorb. didn’t want Bayem to play a show until he had a full set of songs that represented him “in a way that’s the most truthful.” The technique paid off, as others have taken note of Bayem’s mature, unique sound and confident stage presence: His next appearance is this month at The Peppermint Club in LA, which scouted him for Breaking Sound, their regular showcase of up-and-coming artists. The show will be followed by stops in Chicago and Nashville before he returns home to celebrate the release of his next EP by headlining the Hi-Fi on December 14.

As for what comes next, Bayem and Frank are constantly dropping new music. In fact, the two have paired to form a side group, Polychrome, leading to May’s “Sunday Morning.” The art for the track says it all: Frank in a gold sequined bodysuit. Bayem in a purple silk shirt, afro picked out into a shining sphere. It’s disco, baby—another super chill summer anthem, the kind of song you put on a feel-good mix.

Ultimately, Sparkman and Thomas want their artists to blow up so big they fill stadiums and “get the Palm Springs and Paris houses.” But if that happens, “it’ll happen because it’s in a way that’s true to them and true to us as a company,” Sparkman says.

In the meantime, he and Thomas continue building up their ecosystem of staff and collaborators, hoping Absorb. becomes a “de facto contributor to the health of the music scene in town.”

“I don’t want Absorb. to be a household name,” Thomas laughs. “I want our artists to be household names.” 

Photo by Jay Goldz