Tuesday, July 26
County wants YOU to weigh in on Supe search
On June 15 Albemarle County school superintendent Kevin Castner announced his retirement. Today, in conjunction with the search for his replacement, the County launched an online survey to get feedback from the community until August 30. Taking a lesson, perhaps, from the City’s debacle with former superintendent Scottie Griffin and her poor communication skills, the County’s survey at www.k12albemarle. org asks people about things like the importance of a doctorate, teaching experience and Virginia-specific work history. The City and County are searching for superintendents simultaneously.
Wednesday, July 27
Warner cooks up Parkway pork
City and County officials announced today that Republican Sen. John Warner has secured $25 million to pay for a grade-separated interchange for the Meadowcreek Parkway, effectively ensuring that the long-debated road through McIntire Park will be built very soon. The money comes after a delegation of local bigwigs—including public officials, transportation experts, a developer and, for good measure, former County Supervisor and longtime Warner pal Forrest Marshall—visited the Senator last spring seeking help. Char-lottesville Mayor David Brown says the funding removes the last political obstacle to the road. “A majority on Council determined that the Parkway could be a benefit to the city only if it had an interchange,” says Brown. Warner, a UVA grad, sits on a committee that reconciles different versions of House and Senate bills, and he attached a $25 million earmark to the federal transportation bill currently moving through Congress. Although the bill has yet to pass, “if the Senator’s announcing it, it’s close enough to call,” says Harrison Rue, director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Com-mission. Rue, who also met with Warner, says, “When you see the City and County and the business community working together, the funders pay attention.”
Thursday, July 28
Police ticket track-hopping hipsters
Police continued their crackdown today on people illegally crossing the railroad tracks between Downtown and Belmont. “Every-body crosses those tracks, especially when it’s 100 damn degrees outside,” says John Cobb, one of 20 people who have so far received a ticket for “trespassing on railroad property,” a Class IV misdemeanor. Such a charge is punishable by a fine of up to $250. Police say the Buckingham Branch Railroad, which owns the tracks, asked for the crackdown in early June. “It’s in the interest of promoting safety, and the tracks are private property,” says Tom Thalheim, manager of operating practices and safety for Buckingham Branch Railroad.
Be cool
July’s ghastly heat wave let up today when the temperature dropped down to 84 from yesterday’s 96. At final count, July had 12 days of 90+ temperatures and 4.42" of precipitation. Though this month delivered 13 days of rain, the local annual precipitation total (24.18") is still about 14 percent off the average for this point in the year (28.21"). So, all we need now is a bit of rain.
Friday, July 29
Locals to benefit from healthy sperm
New Jersey company Princeton BioMeditech Corp. will build a $7 million facility at the UVA Research Park on Route 29N. Partnering with ContraVac, Inc., a UVA spinoff company, BioMeditech will manufacture products to test male fertility, according to a report in The Daily Progress today. BioMeditech, which also manufactures drug tests, will bring 115 new jobs to Albemarle.
Saturday, July 30
Heat takes teenage cross-country star
Runner Kelly Watt, 18, died today after collapsing from heat stroke Tuesday while working out on Ridge Road. The Daily Progress reports that in 2005 the Albemarle High School graduate was named Central Virginia Cross Country Runner of the Year. He planned to continue competitive running when he enrolled at The College of William and Mary this fall. Watt, an aspiring sports journalist, wrote a sports column for The Hook.
Sunday, July 31
Littlepage: More money, please
He’s helped raise $90 million for the new stadium, but Craig Littlepage, UVA’s director of athletics, wants more. He tells The Daily Progress in an interview published today that, “The biggest concern that I have is what it is that we can do to enhance our endowment.”
Monday, August 1
Easy rider
At press time, it seemed likely City Council would appropriate more than $2 million in State and federal grants for local transit at its meeting tonight. To get the money—which will be used for the Charlottesville Transit System’s marketing, operational and capital expenses—Council had to pony up nearly $173,000 in matching funds. Also on Council’s docket: The Board of Architectural Review will award six preservation awards during the meeting. Recipients include the Music Resource Center, Hunter Craig for his new building at 10th and Market streets, the Paramount, Hospice House, Cadogan Square Antiques and Splendora’s Gelato Café.
So simple, it just might work
Do we finally have a water supply plan?
Is this how public planning is supposed to work?
Could it be that after 30 years of trying in vain to expand the local water supply, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority has found a solution to the hotly debated issue that actually will satisfy everyone?
That’s the way it seems. The RWSA is currently acting on plans to build a pipeline from the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, just north of Charlottesville, to the Ragged Mountain Reservoir southwest of the city. So far, the idea has received applause from RWSA engineers as well as government regulators. The plan also seems to be a middle path between environmental and business groups that have squared off over how to expand the supply.
The RWSA has predicted that by 2050 the local water demand will outpace supply by about 9.9 million gallons per day. Since the late 1970s the RWSA has considered building new reservoirs or expanding existing ones, but the Authority could never figure out how to both satisfy demand and meet the approval of myriad State and federal regulators who have say over the project. Ironically, after spending millions on engineering consultants over the years (about $1.1 million since 2003), the RWSA actually got the idea from a citizen at a public meeting.
In March, RWSA Director Tom Frederick spoke about the water supply plan to members of Ivy Creek Foun-dation, a local environmental group. At the time, the RWSA was considering four potential options: dredging sediment that is clogging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir; raising the dam at that reservoir by four feet; building a pipeline from the James River at Scottsville to Char-lottesville; or raising the dam at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir.
None of the options was perfect. Each option either was too expensive, opposed by the public or unlikely to win regulatory approval.
The Ragged Mountain dam expansion seemed most promising, but it had a major political shortfall. The Ragged Mountain Res-ervoir happens to be situated high in the foothills near the intersection of Fontaine Avenue Extended and 29N. The reservoir’s elevation means that it has a relatively small drainage area, and thus takes many rains to fill.
The RWSA planned to pipe water from the Sugar Hollow reservoir to fill Ragged Mountain. That offended The Friends of the Moormans River, a group dedicated to defending the scenic waterway fed by Sugar Hollow’s overflow. “They were going to steal water from the river,” says Bob Gilges, a Friend of the Moor-mans. “We’d never get water over the dam. It would have been a dead river.”
Gilges also happens to be a member of the Ivy Creek Foun-dation. He went to hear Frederick speak, and to ask a simple question: Instead of a pipeline from Sugar Hollow, why not build one from the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir to Ragged Mountain instead?
“We began exploring that issue,” says Frederick. “All the feedback we’ve received from interest groups suggests that there is considerable support for this alternative. Maybe it’s fair to say we’ve reached a breakthrough.”
When it rains, 97 percent of the water that enters the SFRR flows over the dam. Some of that excess water will be pumped into the Ragged Mountain Reservoir, which, after its $37 million expansion, will hold four times more water than it does now. That water will be stored until it’s needed, says Frederick. In coming months, the Authority will be working out plans and cost estimates for the pipeline.
Gilges says the idea originated from Ridge Schuyler, a member of the Nature Conservancy who is leading an effort to study how much water local streams need to thrive. “In the process of doing that, the idea just hit us,” Schuyler says.
The idea has also united two groups that have been at odds throughout the planning process —the Piedmont Environmental Council and the developer-friendly Free Enterprise Forum. Environmentalists didn’t want the RWSA to pull water from outside the local area, while developers wanted a plan that satisfied those 50-year demand projections.
Gilges chuckles at the idea that the solution came from the public instead of big-bucks consultants. “The RWSA has been getting bad advice for years,” he says.
Frederick, though, says this is an example of planning gone right. “It points to the success of our public outreach,” Frederick says. “We work better when the public is involved.”—John Borgmeyer
Is the case really dismissed?
Pro-lifers say Planned Parenthood actually lost
The July 5 decision in the Planned Parenthood case appeared to settle matters. After refuting each of
the complaints filed against Albemarle County, Albemarle Circuit Court Judge Paul Peatross wrote, “The Petition is dismissed.” Most take this to say that the building on Hydraulic Road is all good and legal: Planned Parenthood can stay put under current occupancy and zoning permits.
But, as with many divisive political issues, the “losing” side is not going down without a fight. Michael Sharman, the Culpeper lawyer who filed the permit challenges, quarrels with the perception of a Planned Parenthood victory. He still claims that Planned Parenthood lost and is currently occupying its building illegally.
“Planned Parenthood lost, end of story,” says Sharman.
The case, which has been a rallying cry for pro-lifers and pro-choicers across the state since last fall, centers on how the 7,262-square-foot building is used. County zoning laws allow for “professional offices” in residential areas. The County says that medical offices such as optometrists or ob-gyn clinics fall under this designation. Sharman, backed by a pro-life group called the Central Virginia Family Forum, filed the complaint under the assertion that Planned Parenthood qualifies as a hospital, not a “professional office,” and thus violates zoning laws. Tactics like these were detailed in the 1985 book Closed, 99 Ways to Stop Abortion by Joe Scheidler, director of the Pro-Life Action League.
Sharman’s contention that he’s the winner in one of two decisions handed down on July 5 is based on a technicality. Planned Parenthood filed a demurrer saying that it wasn’t legal for Sharman’s case to have been brought in the first place. Peatross denied the demurrer and as part of the procedure Planned Parenthood had 21 days to respond. It failed to do so within that timeframe and thus defaulted. Sharman claims that in defaulting, Planned Parent-hood lost the case.
“Default is de-fault is default. It’s over, you lost the case,” Sharman says.
As soon as he has an enforceable order from the judge, he says, Sharman plans to use “all avenues” to stop Planned Parenthood’s current usage of the building as a “hospital.”
“Whether they would leave the building or not is up to them. They are permitted to use it as an office. If it no longer suits their purposes then it’s up to them,” he says.
John Zunka, who represents Planned Parenthood, dismisses Sharman’s assertions.
“I don’t know what Mr. Sharman is saying,” he says. “Judge Peatross wrote that the lawsuit is dismissed and that’s the end of matters.”
Zunka calls the default decision “nothing more than a procedural dispute” and says it has nothing to do with the merits of the case itself. He points to the fact that this second decision, the default decision, is not addressed to all lawyers involved in the case, but only to Sharman and one of Zunka’s colleagues.
Zunka maintains that Planned Parent-hood’s permit is legit and that they will continue to occupy and use the building just as they have since it opened in August 2004.—Nell Boeschenstein
Board of elections
City voters could face a school board referendum on November 8
The August 8 deadline looms for the 2,332 signatures needed to get a referendum for an elected school board on the city’s November 8 ballot, and the petitioners leading the charge say their job is as good as done.
“We have a new batch of petitions that will take us over the top,” says Jeffrey Rossman, a local democrat and UVA history professor who certified the petition back in March. “We’re pretty much done. [The remaining signatures] just need to be confirmed by the Registrar.”
As of Tuesday, July 26, the city Democrats, Republicans and Independents who have banded together over this issue had certified 2,122 signatures. The effort kicked off early June 14, primary day, on which half the John Hancocks needed for the referendum were obtained. The other half were collected in the past six weeks by door-to-door soliciting, as well as by approaching people on the Downtown Mall and at City Market.
At the time Rossman first certified the petition, the controversy surrounding former superintendent Scottie Griffin was coming to a head. The controversy erupted when Griffin’s FY 2006 budget proposed cuts to guidance and physical education positions while adding ad-ministrative posts in Griffin’s office. The School Board’s poor management of the fallout led many to question how and why decisions affecting city schools get made, highlighting issues of accountability. After serving only 10 months of her four-year contract, Griffin resigned from her post on April 21, with a buyout of nearly $300,000.
Rossman won’t say whether an elected school board could help avert a similar situation in the future, but allows that, “This year large numbers of people in Char-lottesville came around to [supporting the idea of] an elected school board, so it was a good year to get this referendum on the ballot.” Moreover, he believes that an elected school board would encourage greater transparency in the board’s decision-making processes, a central issue with the Griffin controversy.
While Mayor David Brown believes there’s an elected school board in Charlottesville’s future, he encourages discussion of pros and cons before the proposal goes to the voters. He says that an elected school board could “narrow the pool of people interested in serving.” He points out that the elec-tion process takes re-sources that not everyone can afford, thereby automatically ex-cluding some talented people.
Councilor Blake Caravati is more openly skeptical of the proposal in general.
Albemarle already has an elected school board to which Charlottesville’s board has oft been compared of late. But, says Caravati, “comparing Charlottesville to Albemarle is fool’s paradise. It’s comparing apples to oranges.”
However, should the referendum pass, Caravati anticipates the school board elections would combine a ward system with at-large seats. In a ward system, representatives are elected solely by members of their districts. Caravati notes that most elected school boards have four or five representatives elected by specific school districts and one or two elected at-large.
If the city is carved up for a school board election, would a ward system for City Council be far behind?
Caravati doubts that, point-ing out that school districts are often different from political districts.
Rossman agrees: “Anyone that says [an elected school board] paves the way to the [ward system] doesn’t know the law.” The City Council would have to request that their State representative pro-pose legislation at the Gen-eral Assembly, and Charlot-tesville’s City Council, says Rossman, shows no inclination to do any such thing.—Nell Boeschenstein
Can the Hoos hang?
ACC football bulks up for greater TV gain
The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is beefing up again, and UVA could stand to benefit—if they can hang with the competition.
Last week the ACC announced it would add two new bowl games in 2006, meaning that next season ACC teams, including the Cavaliers, will have up to eight chances to compete in a post-season, nationally televised game—seven bowls, plus one of the four major championship bowls [see our “Name that game” quiz, right]. This marks another effort by the conference to bulk up its profile and TV revenues. Last year, the conference voted to add three new teams—Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech.
“The ACC wants to keep a leg up,” says Wes McElroy, midday host of ESPN 840 in Charlottesville. “It used to be just a basketball conference, but now the ACC has positioned [itself] as the No. 2 [football] conference behind the Southeastern Conference.”
In an early-season poll, UVA was ranked No. 3 in the ACC’s six-team Coastal Division. Whether the ACC’s higher profile will help or hurt the Wahoos depends on how they play against powerhouse teams like Florida State and Virginia Tech, last year’s ACC champ.
The extra bowl games mean that UVA has a better chance of playing in one of the nationally televised contests. Any bowl game—except the national championship—is basically meaningless in terms of a team’s overall standing,
says John Galinsky, editor of TheSabre.com, a fan website. But a bowl berth means more TV revenue for the school, along with more exposure and improved recruiting for the team. “Maybe that means UVA will stop hitting up their fans to build their facilities,” says Galinsky. “Just kidding.”—John Borgmeyer
Name that game
Seven of the games below are actual bowls for which ACC teams are eligible. Can you pick out the fakes? Check your answers below.
1. Toyota Gator Bowl
2. Chicken of the Sea Tunafish Bowl
3. Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl
4. Kidney Punch Bowl
5. Campbell’s Soup Bowl
6. MPC Computers Bowl
7. Vanish Toilet Bowl
8. Gaylord Hotel’s Music City Bowl
9. Champs Sports Bowl
10. Emerald Bowl
11. Cheerios Cereal Bowl
12. Meineke Car Care Bowl
Did you catch the fakes? Nos. 2, 4, 5, 7 and 11 aren’t real.
School of rock
Local inventor says he’s got a new way to teach music
Glyn Hall’s world is one of music’s past, present and—perhaps—
its future.
On one end of the living room in his Fluvanna County home, Hall keeps a pair of acoustic guitars leaning beside an Estey organ, a 1930s vintage instrument. On the other end of the room, a television tuned to a music channel is washing the room in an ambient composition called “An Embryonic Breath.”
On the coffee table, Hall’s ideas for the future of music are thumbtacked to a large piece of cardboard. He calls it a “photonic sequencer,” and Hall claims it could change the way children learn music.
“Music is based on very simple patterns,” says Hall, a former country musician turned inventor. “Once you see the patterns, you can play any chord you want. In a very short period of time, you can understand music theory.”
Hall’s idea is based on physics. Every tone in the music scale is a sound wave with a specific frequency. Middle C, for example, is approximately 262 Hz—that is, 262 waves per second. Light is also composed of waves, except light waves have much higher frequencies. Hall wants to create a keyboard by multiplying sound frequencies by a constant number, thereby turning the sound into light. Hall’s keyboard looks like a palette of watercolors, with each color producing a musical note. Middle C is lime green.
Hall’s keyboard arranges the note-
colors in a way that makes it easier to
figure out how to build chords. It would help people understand music without cracking theory books, and Hall hopes
his invention will eventually be used
in schools.
Sibley Johns, executive director of the Music Resource Center, says she would love to see Hall’s device come to fruition. “A lot of our kids have short attention spans and are nontraditional learners,” says Johns. “It’s a real incentive for them to pick up music composition skills without having to learn intensive academic skills.”
On Monday, July 25, Hall filed his idea with the U.S. Patent Office. It can take up to three years to obtain a patent, and now Hall is knocking on doors, trying to enlist investors for his product.
When Hall called on Charlottesville Venture Group, executive director Jim Lansing said that big-money venture capitalists, called “angels,” typically want to get a return on their investment within seven years. “It’s a lot of work to get to those people,” says Hall, who has a slew of other inventions—a special wheelchair that allows disabled people to do carpentry or lay floor tiles, a glove that resists needle pricks and a remote control device that carries luggage.
Making it big in the invention game is a lot like breaking into the music business, so Hall knows it’s a long and winding road ahead. Following Lansing’s advice, Hall is taking his idea for “show and tells” to various companies, and plans to form a nonprofit company. “There’s a lot of creative financing that goes along with developing new technologies,” Hall says. “It’s wearing me out.”—John Borgmeyer
Diary of a debut
Pulling it together to open the Charlottesville Pavilion
Washington, D.C. is not the only city to have joined the major leagues this year. But where the nation’s capital got there with a scrappy baseball team that might still harbor wild-card hopes, Charlottesville went the culture route, enlisting Coran Capshaw to launch the Char-lottesville Pavilion, a state-of-the-art outdoor entertainment venue. With a sweetheart loan of $2.5 million from the City and a 40-year lease to develop the property, Capshaw didn’t waste time. Transferring his iron will to his deputy in this affair, General Manager Kirby Hutto, Capshaw set a grand opening date, July 30. Neither rain, a wind-damaged roof, nor that most lasting of Char-lottesville crops—naysayers—would interfere with meeting that goal. Here’s a glimpse of the final week’s efforts to get there.—Cathy Harding
Monday, July 25
Where’s my shrink wrap?
The heat index exceeds 100 degrees. At 1pm, the guy drilling holes into the cement retaining wall is sweating Niagara Falls.
A fellow who goes by “Big Daddy” and seems to be employed to wave an orange flag all day starts stripping. “You tell Kirby Hutto, it’s so hot we’re taking our clothes off down here!” With that he puts his fluorescent orange vest back over his now bare torso and replaces the white Martin Horn hard hat on his head.
One hundred workers are on site today at the east end of the Downtown Mall. A few of them are working for the City, extending the Mall with new bricks. Most are working on the Pavilion site, which teems with industry and perspiration. They could be constructing a blockbuster movie set—The Capshaw Empire Strikes Back. They’re excavating and drilling and hoisting and driving CAT machinery. But besides what Charlottesville Pavilion General Manager Kirby Hutto calls “lots of little niggling things” on the punch list, the main push today is to install metal handrails on all of the retaining walls along the Pavilion’s perimeter in time for the soft opening of the $3 million-plus venue 48 hours hence. The City says the Pavilion cannot open without those, so if it means keeping ice chests fully stocked for guys producing waterfalls of sweat while Country 99.7 plays from a tinny boombox, or pulling other superhuman tricks to get the job done, well, so be it.
“I gave up on sleep two weeks ago,” Hutto says.
Once the sun goes down, the action will shift indoors to the nighttime worksite, the basement of the Downtown Recreation Center. Over the course of 14 hours (pulled in two shifts), 1,250 cardboard boxes will be ripped open, each holding a pair of chairs, which get hauled out for the Pavilion’s big shows.
“I had been told the chairs would be stacked on palettes and shrink wrapped. That was a little surprise,” Hutto says.
Tuesday, July 26
“Ladies and Gentlemen…”
About half the 300 feet of handrail is installed by mid-afternoon. Rolls of sod start to get pressed onto the north and south sides of the bowl. The heat won’t quit. The stage is clean and mostly empty. It’s fun to walk out to the edge and pretend you’re introducing the First Lady of Country Music. A couple of riggers hang from flexible ladders adjusting the stage lights above.
Over by City Hall, the dog pee/toddler splash fountain is now but a mere memory. In its place, the space below the three presidents frieze gets decorated with hopeful impatiens, carefully tucked into fresh mulch. A trio of workers takes refuge in the small patch of leafy shade adjacent to City Hall. But there’s little relief for City types who are meeting daily with Hutto to hash out what he calls “granular level issues.” With Seventh Street anticipated to remain a construction zone for another month, for instance, they have to figure out alternative paths for handling things like garbage and Port-A-Johns, not to mention the siting of what Hutto calls “a true concessions area.”
“The beauty of it is, everybody bangs on the issue until it’s worked out,” Hutto says.
Wednesday, July 27
Go now or forever hold your pees
It’s 10:30am and here come the toilets. Twenty-two Port-a-Johns, what the guy from Cartersville-based Mo-Johns calls the “party units,” get unloaded next to the rec center. Forty feet of handrail remains undone and it’s eight hours until doors open for Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, the funk-jazz road veterans who will headline tonight for the Pavilion’s soft run.
By 3:30pm, the sod is all but down, with a few square feet left to unroll at the west end of the bowl. Most of the 1,200 chairs that will go out for tonight’s show are in place. Denson’s sound guy is working the board from inside a view-obstructing white tent that has to stay there in the event of rain, which is in the forecast. The jazzy notes of Jonatha Brooke test the system. A luxury rock ’n’ roll bus parks on Water Street. The Lexis-Nexis tunnel serves as a loading dock. Three guys are having an impromptu meeting inside a pick-up truck next to the stage. Hutto is hauling a palette of Pepsi products.
T-shirt nation
It’s 6pm, the skies are threatening. TV reporters position their set-ups near the City Hall Annex, where the stage, now crowded with instruments, makes a good backdrop. Ten minutes later, the wind is rising. Cardboard waste cans start their own dance and the newly minted Pavilion event staff (blue t-shirts for ushers, yellow for security) face an early challenge: what to do in the event of thunder and lightning. “Folks, when there’s lightning, you have to get in the tunnel,” says one of the six police officers already stationed at the Pavilion. Sixty early birds and curiosity-seekers do just that. It pours. It stops. The temperature drops almost 10 degrees seemingly in an instant, cool for the first time in days.
“Two. Two. What’s up, Charlottesville?” At 7:29pm, BJ Pendleton of Man Mountain Jr. utters the first words into the Pavilion’s sound system. A couple-hundred people listen and chat while event staff deploy jumbo packs of kitchen towels to wipe off the chairs.
By 8pm, the city’s politeratti have joined the growing crowd. Positivity wafts everywhere. Night starts to fall and everyone gets better looking. Beer ticket sales are brisk, perhaps in inverse relationship to the price of admission, which was nothing. Along with what has grown to 3,000 people, Coran Capshaw is on site. For the next 90 minutes he’ll remain tête à tête with Aubrey Watts, Charlottesville’s director of economic development, their backs to the stage (“This guy is the real star here,” Capshaw says of Watts).
Evan Harris, a Nelson County engineer, stands close to the stage. His t-shirt depicts an evergreen with the legend “Plant trees.” At 8:15pm Denson takes the stage with his six fellow musicians, a tiny universe of good vibrations. The violet lighting scheme on stage and insistent sexy sound of the brass instruments casts an instant showbiz glow on the surroundings. Harris nods his head. Is this cool? “Yeah,” he says. “They need a spot to draw bands like this—an outdoors venue.”
Thursday, July 28
Book ’em
“I’m dog tired,” says Hutto, with a soup-çon of sarcasm. “I don’t know why.”
One day to fix whatever problems materialized last night, and then it will be time to debut Fridays After 5 in its new home. When the Pavilion is fully up to speed, Hutto says, the annual schedule will include 25 to 30 national, ticketed shows (no more Karl Denson freebies!), up to 22 free Fridays shows, several festivals and plenty of community events that the Pavilion is contractually obligated to host (think Charlottesville Municipal Band and First Night Virginia).
Friday, July 29
What would Jesus play?
The storm clouds hold off all day. Shortly before 5pm Terri Allard, local folk-country princess, runs a sound check. The usual Fridays crowd ambles in—young parents pushing balloon-festooned strollers, early retirees with lawn blankets and chairs, lonesome guys reading Chinese philosophy to themselves, beer drinkers.
The Jan Smith Trio looks rather wee on that big ol’ stage. The Pavilion is great for headliners. But opening acts…earn your stripes here.
As for Allard, the crowd just eats her up. Somebody says she plays perfect county fair music. Themes include Jesus, Elvis, broken hearts and freight trains.
Hutto can be heard to estimate the crowd at 4,000, and that’s probably not counting the rubber-necking pedestrians on the Belmont Bridge.
Saturday, July 30
You’re cookin’ with country
Heat is no longer an enemy. It’s rain, and comes down in spurts all day. But God is evidently on the payroll, because about the time Loretta Lynn, the headliner for the official Pavilion grand opening, is getting her hair done the skies clear, and they stay that way all night. Goodbye, Anxiety! Hello, Country Music!
Having rested for three days, the lawn is open. So is the staircase in the middle, making it a lot easier for LL faithful from Louisa and Augusta and Buckingham to make their way through. The sold-out concert doubles as a fundraiser for Live Arts, but it’s a toss-up as to who warms the crowd more, Artistic Director John Gibson thanking Capshaw’s many businesses for the support or Patsy Lynn shilling “Momma’s” autographed cookbooks and informing the crowd that this evening marks 44 years of Loretta Lynn performing in concert.
After Patsy does a couple of numbers herself, backed by her mother’s band, the Coalminers, Sissy Spacek gets called to the stage. “Loretta Lynn is a woman to be reckoned with,” says the Albemarle actress who portrayed her in Coal Miner’s Daughter and earned an Oscar for the effort. “I have learned to do whatever she tells me to do.”
Which prove to be truer words than any might have imagined. For shortly after the Queen herself walks onstage in a tiered, white chiffon dress that sparkles and sways and surely has a staff of its own, and after she does a couple of numbers, including major crowd pleaser “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” she calls Spacek to the stage where she compels her to stay for the next 90 minutes. It’s thrilling to watch Lynn perform apparently without a set list (“Whadya wanna hear?” she asks the eager crowd), even if she does chide Spacek for not singing along. But the performance slips into family reunion land once she invites Spacek to sit down and jawbone about good times on the movie set 25 years ago. Lynn ultimately performs about 15 songs. For some, the chat between the Famous Movie Star and the Famous Singer is downright charming. Not so for others. (One man instructs a reporter at the end of the show, “Write down that next time there should be less chin and more spin.”)
But does it really matter? Pavilion management had stressed from the start that the facility would be a flexible space. And in the course of only three short nights, it had already transformed from a nightclub to a living room. Who knows what else the future might hold?
Written by John Borgmeyer from staff reports and news sources.