“Charlottesville”? Sometimes it seems like they may as well call it “Musicville.” From eager bards lining up at open-mic nights to secretive electronica geeks hunkering in basements, this town has more than its share of musicians.
With many would-be stars orbiting the community, perhaps it’s natural that someone would serve as a center of gravity. Call them impresarios for the way they foster talent. Call them founding fathers for the way they mold a dynamic scene from the raw material of clubs, musicians and audience. Call them masters for their mentoring relationships with young apprentices. Fred Boyce of the The Prism, Atsushi Miura of Tokyo Rose, and jazz trumpeter John D’earth of Miller’s and UVA are pillars of their scenes.
The three have very different interests and styles. But they’re all well regarded in Charlottesville for their commitment to music—not only as performers in their own right, but as the centers of their respective musical scenes.
The best little coffeehouse in Virginia
Of all the colorful metaphors Fred Boyce uses to describe his role at The Prism (formerly Prism Coffee House), perhaps the most apt is the hourglass. On one end, he says, is a wide world of musicians, on the other, a collection of enthusiastic listeners. And in the center, at the narrow point through which everything else must pass, is Boyce himself.
Another way Boyce describes being The Prism’s program director is “holding a wolf by the ears.” The challenge of running a venue that routinely books three shows a weekend is daunting, he says.
“You think about having 150 people to your house, and the preparation that goes into that,” he says, “plus the artists and all their problems, trying to keep posters up around town, compete for coverage in the press….”
Yet Boyce doesn’t intend to let the wolf go, since his role at The Prism is also intensely rewarding. “It’s something I feel very strongly needs to be seen through. I have this compulsion to get people to listen to something they don’t normally listen to,” he says.
He felt that urge to expand horizons from his earliest college days: “Everybody else was playing ‘Freebird’ and I was blasting newgrass revival out my dorm window.”
In 1990 when he took on his role at The Prism on Gordon Avenue near UVA Grounds, Boyce says, the venue (started in 1966 by a group of UVA students) “wasn’t really going in any direction at all, except maybe downhill.” He has since turned it into a vehicle for exploring the broader meaning of the word “folk”—what he calls “folk with a small f.” He says worldwide folkloric traditions form “an underlying firmament under virtually every type of music. They’ve been around for hundreds of years and never gone out of style,” he says.
“They’re almost like organically accruing substances.”
In addition to The Prism’s core Celtic and bluegrass offerings, Boyce brings in old-time Appalachian string bands and avant-garde jazz and classical musicians, many of whom are wowed by the venue’s living-room intimacy (it seats about 80). In fact, Boyce says, the Prism is more of a regional and even national institution than a local one, better known by artists and enthusiasts around the country than by many who live in Charlottesville. “We get the impression that people talk about it a lot in other music scenes, like in Austin,” he says.
Prism performers often conduct master classes and workshops while they’re in town, but Boyce says the shows themselves are educational in their own right. “I think that’s really valuable for young musicians to come to a place where they can really see the stage,” he says, “see what their hands are doing.” He recalls a young Celtic fiddle player, Cleek Schrey, who grew up seeing his musical heroes at The Prism and is now pursuing music seriously in Chicago.
All this hangs on something rather rare—Boyce’s willingness to work for mostly nonmaterial rewards. As a non-profit organization, with no alcohol sales to augment income, The Prism pays Boyce a stipend only for doing the booking. The rest of the details depend on a group of volunteers, headed up by Boyce and his wife Kenyon.
“It’s definitely a labor of love,” he says. “If I didn’t have other ways to augment my income there’d be no way to make a living here.” (A longtime banjo, guitar and fiddle player, Boyce teaches privately on the side.)
A onetime Folk Director at UVA’s FM radio station, WTJU, Boyce now volunteers as a DJ, and a comfortable synergy often exist between the two jobs. He says installing a live broadcast loop from The Prism in 1992 was key; there have been regular Saturday night broadcasts of Prism shows on WTJU ever since.
“It’s a great way to expand the Prism’s audience without damaging the intimacy of the venue,” he says.
Overlap between WTJU broadcasters and Prism volunteers makes for a tight community and a large body of collective musical knowledge.
Boyce’s involvement since the late ’80s in the Charlottesville scene has left its mark. Chris Munson, a booker and production manager at Starr Hill Music Hall, notes a change in the town’s collective musical taste.
“Bluegrass has become very popular the last couple years,” Munson says. “I think Fred helped on that. Fred was into bluegrass when bluegrass wasn’t cool.”
The Prism refracts
Beyond that, the volunteerism of the Prism seems to draw in people with a passion for music, steeping them in acoustic and folk genres and inspiring them to expand the scene even further. Mary Gordon Hall and John Hill, president and booker, respectively, for monthly concert series the Acoustic Muse, were both schooled as Prism volunteers.
“My whole record collections stems from going to concerts at the Prism,” says Hall, a guitarist and songwriter who moved to Charlottesville in the late 1980s in part because of its folk scene. At The Prism, she started the Songwriter’s Stage, a monthly series of singer/songwriter concerts, headlined by name acts and opened by locals on an open-mic basis. At each show, up to 10 local musicians would get a few minutes in the spotlight.
Eventually, nearly five years ago, Hall, Melissa Farina and Adam Slate decided to begin their own monthly concert series to showcase singer/songwriter acts—a category slightly outside the Prism umbrella. With a $100 donation, the Acoustic Muse was born. Local heroes Terri Allard and Barb Martin played the first show.
“They already had a following, so they brought a huge crowd,” Hall says. “It was like a benefit. It gave us a cushion. Then we could bring in other people.”
Ever since, AM has presented acts like Richie Havens and Cheryl Wheeler. Though the series (which floats between Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church, Starr Hill and occasionally other venues) draws crowds by booking well-known artists, locals like Nickeltown and the Jan Smith Band usually open the shows.
“It still gives somebody a chance to be heard in front of an audience who’s not on the nationally touring set,” Hall says.
Hill, meanwhile, had been involved at The Prism and WTJU, and then hosted the Acoustic Sunrise morning show during the early years of another FM station, WNRN, on which he interviewed hundreds of musicians. He now handles booking for Acoustic Muse and says that the series serves a core audience of regulars.
“I’ve had people tell me they have kids, they’re busy, and they can only come to one or two of our shows a year,” he says, “but please don’t stop doing it.”
Even without a permanent home, the Acoustic Muse serves as a focal point for a cooperative, interconnected scene. Many of the local acts who open Acoustic Muse shows are the same people who filtered through Hill’s and Hall’s radio shows (Hall also volunteered at WTJU) and the Songwriter’s Stage. And many are involved with Acoustic Charlottesville, a monthly showcase for local musicians co-founded by local songwriter Danny Schmidt and held at Live Arts.
Hall says the scene is growing. “Since we’ve been doing this for a while, we can see younger people coming in, and people moving to Charlottesville to be involved in this scene,” she says. Like Boyce, Hall and Hill are certainly not in it for the money. “We’re as nonprofit as it gets,” Hill says.
Modest master
Mostly separate from the folk and acoustic world, sushi restaurant and underground club Tokyo Rose on University Avenue is no less a hotbed of musical activity than The Prism. And, just as The Prism might falter were Boyce to depart, Tokyo Rose’s particular contribution depends on owner Atsushi Miura. Yet Miura’s management style could hardly differ more from Boyce’s.
“I don’t think he cares at all about specific genres,” said Christiane Knight, who runs the Rose’s weekly Goth party, The Dawning. “He just wants to promote music itself.”
She says Miura (who declined to be interviewed for this story) concentrates on the restaurant side of the business and leaves the music to a group of bookers, giving them almost total free reign. “He’s interested, but he’s not a dictator,” she says.
The bookers have made Tokyo Rose Charlottesville’s primary outlet for punk, indie rock, and Goth. Rocking harder, and opening all shows to the under-21 crowd, means that occasionally the club gets a bit rowdy. Shawn Stagner, a booker and bartender, remembers “One night [a musician] sprayed a whole tube of K-Y Jelly on the floor, like an ice rink, so people were dancing and moshing and couldn’t get their footing.
“They would run and slide and hit the wall,” Stagner says. “And Atsushi just said ‘Clean up after yourselves.’”
Miura’s tolerance of such antics depends on trusting that his employees and their friends will in fact clean up their messes. Despite occasional complaints from neighboring businesses—and one foyer incident involving gunshots that put a stop to hip-hop shows at the club—the arrangement seems to mostly work out. Katie Nye, a former employee, says, “I’ve never seen a club that functions like that, just by the goodwill of the owner.”
What Miura now has on his hands, after nearly eight years of goodwill, is a club that both musicians and fans love to call home.
“If it wasn’t for Atsushi, there’d be a lot of boredom,” Stagner says, “and a lot less bands that would come out and be able to express themselves.”
Knight says that The Dawning attracts regular show-goers from Lynchburg and Richmond, and that Tokyo Rose is a place where parents feel their teenagers are safe.
“If we ever lost the Rose, I don’t think we’d have anything as nice for a long time,” she says. “He provides a space for us to develop our scene.”
Miura himself is a musician, fronting Atsushi Miura and the Dirty Round Eyes, and many of his bookers say this explains his sympathy for nascent bands still finding their musical footing.
“If it wasn’t for Tokyo Rose a lot of these indie rock, punk and Goth bands wouldn’t exist,” Stagner says. “This place helped them get a name for themselves and kind of work out the kinks. They could make mistakes here and then go out on the road to bigger markets.”
Stagner says his now-defunct punk combo the Counselors, like many other bands, had their first show—and many subsequent ones—at Tokyo Rose. “You finally get comfortable here and you go other places, and there’s just no other place like this,” he says. “Everyplace else you play is crappy little sports bars. Then you come back here and you’re like, this place is insanely hospitable.”
Bella Morte, whose Goth stylings are now supporting national tours and gaining a European audience, also built up their confidence and reputation through repeated Tokyo Rose appearances after forming in 1996. Gopal Metro, an original member, says Miura was an early champion of Bella Morte.
“When we started out, there wasn’t a place to play, and we were doing something that was not respected at all,” Metro says. “The Goth scene in Charlottesville didn’t exist. Atsushi approached us and said ‘I really want you guys here.’ Without him, the Charlottesville underground would be incredibly crippled.”
We’re only in it for the money
Clearly the leadership of a dedicated few can lead to a cohesive and supportive environment, as the punk, jazz and acoustic scenes in Charlottesville show. The City’s relatively low-key electronica scene, for example, may well be explained by the fact that, at the moment, no one person is truly central to that genre.
For some, a defining characteristic of a true musical “pillar” is volunteerism. But if that were accurate, there’d be no room for mention of the very popular jam band genre, which centers around acts like Lake Trout and Soulive, mostly showcased in upscale Starr Hill. The scene has musical ties to Dave Matthews Band and financial ties to DMB manager Coran Capshaw, whose empire includes Starr Hill as well as locally based, online music merchandiser Musictoday and Red Light management. In some ways, that makes jam band music a local phenomenon and Capshaw a pillar of the jam band scene. Yet Nye, who also worked for Musictoday, says the scene has a very different vibe than others without big-money backing.
“I think it’s cool what [Capshaw] has done with Starr Hill in the sense that there’s bigger acts coming to Charlottesville,” she says, adding that the club fills a void left by the demise of Trax. “But I hate that place. You just get the feeling that it’s so for-profit.”
Learning by example
Capshaw lets his money do the talking, eschewing personal visibility in the community. Not so John D’earth, the jazz trumpeter who is eminently easy to locate. Every Thursday at Miller’s, the Thompson D’earth band upholds a weekly tradition at least a dozen years old. The way D’earth describes this phenomenon fits with his calling as a teacher: “The Miller’s gig and the UVA gig are sort of dynamic centers where people can come in and learn things and participate,” he says.
D’earth’s “UVA gig” is directing the UVA Jazz Ensemble, as well as teaching improvisation and trumpet. Matt Kunz, a UVA senior whose second major is music, says D’earth is an inspiring teacher.
“He’s a brilliant guy,” Kunz says. “He’s so eloquent, and he teaches you the philosophy of music so well. It’s such an asset to have him here.”
D’earth is clearly passionate about working with students—inspiring them to improvise, to compose, to experiment. He remembers challenging a classical cello player to improvise a duet with him on the spot. The student was terrified, but D’earth guided him into a successful improvisation.
“It had nothing to do with me,” he says. “But what a thrill to see this guy go from zero to 60 in two seconds.”
D’earth says he wants students to take ownership of their own musical development, rather than simply imitate the masters. “What about putting the means of production in the hands of the workers?” he says. “You have to see yourself as the creative agent if you want to do creative work.”
D’earth has been able to integrate his role as teacher with his notable performance career in many ways, from bringing jazz greats to UVA to inviting students to sit in with his various bands (including the Freebridge Quintet and the Charlottesville Swing Orchestra). He points to a great tradition of teaching in jazz: “You’re a young player who’s promising, you get gigs from the older players. The amount of information and sheer generosity of these older people—this is true all through the history of this music.”
Kunz calls D’earth “a second father to me”, but D’earth says the relationship is reciprocal. “I’m just as enriched as he is, even more so sometimes,” he says.
They both agree that the atmosphere in the UVA jazz department is one of openness. “There’s no competition,” Kunz says. “Everyone learns from everybody.”
D’earth credits his colleagues with fostering an environment on and off Grounds that makes young players want to stay. Jamal Millner, a former student, has played guitar on some of D’earth’s recordings and tours and records with blues great Corey Harris.
“The jazz scene just seems to get better and better,” D’earth says. “It’s been invaded by some really obsessed people— like myself, like my wife Dawn Thompson, like Robert Jospé, Jeff Decker, Pete Spaar. We’re obsessed. We want to play.”