Month: July 2011

A recent weekend getaway found us scrambling a little for accommodations. My mom had a hotel room for the week; we thought we could stay in the same hotel for two nights; it turned out we couldn’t. Instead we figured we’d camp. It’s certainly financially sustainable, at $20 per night.

I love camping. Sleeping outdoors feels excellent. Sleeping on the ground is fine. Sleeping in a tent during a serious lightning storm ain’t fine at all.

Our first night, we noted a lack of stars as we headed to bed. This was due, as it turned out, to a massive bank of storm clouds moving overhead. An hour or so later, we felt some sprinkles and had to quickly put on the rain fly we’d left off the tent for the sake of coolness. Then things really got exciting. A clap of thunder exploded directly overhead. The rain took on Niagara-like intensity. Water began seeping into the tent from all four sides.

Sleep was impossible during this racket, and once the storm passed we found ourselves with various body parts resting in puddles. It was a rough night–the kind of night where you finally doze off, then wake an hour later feeling relieved because dawn’s arrived.

Hotels are notoriously not eco, with their tiny soaps and overcranked A/C and bedspreads made from petroleum. Camping should be an improvement, footprint-wise. But when you have to go directly from your campsite to a laundromat, where you start four industrial-strength dryers running at once, it probably evens out.

"Places" is a new feature where local artists show us the places around town that inspire them.

Guest post by Chelsea Hicks

Sarah Owen of JohnSarahJohn likes to get lost in the woods. If she has the time, that is. The Owen duo—the second half being Sarah’s father John—recently transformed a West Main transmission shop into a retail store/design studio/espresso bar/event space. Between running the shop itself, their creative design services and hosting movie screenings, community dinners and evening shows in the store’s backroom she is, she admits, a bit busy.

Her own art combines wall, floor and furniture treatment techniques with wood canvases and precise lines to create distinctly unique portraits. But with so much material swathed and stacked around her everyday world—local artists’ wares, warehouses of potential stock for the store—she likes to “gain some perspective,” in the evenings. For her that means walks on Observatory Hill with her dog, Madeline.

Photo by Anna Caritj.

Do you remember the first time you came here?

Right after I moved into town and I really had no idea where I was going and I just ended up here and I just kept going up. I just sort of discovered it on my own through walking around.

What do these trails have for you that other places lack?

Most people might say a museum or some place that’s full of inspiring works…There’s a lot of visual stimulation in my day to day life. I come up here and let that—not let it go—but to get some perspective on it…That’s another thing I sort of struggle with in my profession, is that it’s sort of material based and what I like most about what we do is the ability to inspire people who come in.

Has this place every appeared in your work?

It actually has. I was doing a drawing class and one of our assignments was to find branches and bits of nature and bring it back to the studio to work with. So I found little branches from here and brought them back.

Whether Owen comes to the empty trails with too many artistic visions in her head, or she takes a souvenir of the quiet woods back to the studio, she uses these walks to realize artistic possibility. "Being outside in the fresh air and stepping away from it all for a while grounds me and gives me an essential sense of clarity and perspective," she says.

JSJ’s interior bespeaks her conviction. They carry the candles, book collections, prints and art of the people they’ve met along the way. As Owen says, “Neither my father nor I pretend to be experts at everything and what we have found really works for JSJ is to collaborate with people…whether it’s a seamstress or a musician or a sculptor, performers.”

A few shows to check out this weekend:

Play On! Theatre hosts the latest installment of the National Stand-up Comedy Series, a growing franchise of slap-happy stage events that are bound for The Paramount later this year. Saturday night’s comedian is one Brian Kerns, who you may know from NBC’s "Last Comic Standing" and, according to his bio, was once in the audience of "The Price is Right." Sample the goods here.

Shows have been filling the room over at Alhamraa with some frequency. One scheduled for Sunday looks especially promising, with CSC Funk Band, Colin L Orchestra and the bawdy country songwriter Jonny Corndawg, who takes his music more seriously than his name suggests; check out my interview with the ‘Dawg from earlier this week.

I’ve been bugging out lately over the music of Nettles, a group fronted by the local poet/songwriter Guion Pratt. Sometimes songs sound like its writer was too preoccuppied with writing a poem that it ends up sucking (see Dawes, below), but even when dedicating songs to Frank Stanford, Pratt finds a nice balance between the two with Nettles. Dude can play guitar, too! Nettles plays the Tea Bazaar on Saturday night with Timbre (the harpist from Nashville—very cool!) and Richmond’s Lobo Marino.

Oh, and it’s like O Brother Where Art Thou all up in here over the next couple of weeks, with Gillian Welch headed for the Pavilion later in August, and Allison Krauss headlining the mega Free Clinic benefit this weekend at the Pavilion. Opening tonight for Krauss (who plays with her band Union Station frequent collaborator Jerry Douglas) is the modern folk act Dawes. They’re pretty good, but then all of a sudden gets too earnest when you really start listening. They’re all, "I want the feeling waking next to you/ I want to find my children at your feet," and I’m all, "Where’s the cream filling?" Life is a lot of things, happy, sad, funny, boring, fun. Dawes, your songs can be too!

That goes for the whole lot of you.

What are you up to this weekend?

Last week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers withdrew the permit required to build a box culvert and sewer crossing needed for the construction of McIntire Road Extended (MRE), one of the city portions of the Meadow Creek Parkway, after the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) decided to change the road’s design to avoid disrupting local waters.

Today, the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park publicly called for VDOT to make new plans available before construction begins. In a press conference on the Downtown Mall, Coalition member Rich Collins told reporters that the group wants City Council to prevent any action on the road before the plans are reviewed and before a public hearing is held.

Despite multiple requests, VDOT has not released any information regarding their plans, says Collins.

“Are they going to build a bridge?” he asked. “Or something else?”

More after the photo.

Coalition members Peter Kleeman (left) and John Cruickshank show reporters a map of McIntire Road Extended.

According to fellow Coalition member Peter Kleeman, if VDOT decides to construct a bridge to cross the stream, it will have to follow environmental regulations and, given the strict rules, could potentially be a minimum 100′ tall—which he calls “pretty substantial.”

If construction on MRE starts before the new designs are made readily available and before City Council has had the time to review them, the Coalition will file an injunction in state court, says Coalition member John Cruickshank.
 

The morning after the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) voted 3-2 to move forward with the Western Bypass, Albemarle County Chairman Ken Boyd—a longtime supporter of the project—expressed his satisfaction.

“This is a huge amount of transportation money that we haven’t seen in many, many years, and in addition to the Bypass we will get funding for some projects in the Places29 Master Plan that needed to be done,” Boyd said, during an interview in his office.

Boyd said he trusted a letter from Secretary of Transportation Sean Connaughton that included a recommendation to the Commonwealth Transportation Board to fund the widening of 29N as well as other important local road-building priorities.

Boyd said he was disappointed that the vote was split, but he said he didn’t feel the vote of the MPO members reflected their party ideologies.

“I don’t think it’s locally political. Certainly on the state level, it’s political because we didn’t ask for this,” Boyd said. “They came to us and said ‘We want to build that Bypass because it’s been a hole in our system for a long time.’”

With his own re-election campaign in its final stages, Boyd said he decided not to consider the impact of the Bypass issue on his political career.

“People are trying to make it a campaign issue, but I honestly believe this is the right thing to do, so I’m disregarding the effect it has on the election,” Boyd said.

Boyd said Gov. Bob McDonnell made it clear during his time as attorney general that he felt the $47 million in federal funding used to purchase right-of-way for the project would be rescinded if the Bypass wasn’t moved forward. The total right of way expenditures on the project are expected to be around $71 million.

Boyd said the region needs the state money and moving the Bypass forward was a smart, practical decision that didn’t contradict his ideological position as a fiscal conservative.

“This is going to sound like pork, but it’s not. If we don’t take this money, it’s not going to be returned to the state’s coffers. It’s going to go somewhere else,” Boyd said.

Boyd said fears that the design of the Bypass would be out-dated or fail to include local input were unfounded.

“No one trusts government anymore. But there is a process you have to go through and the only thing determined at this point is the route between the northern and southern terminus,” Boyd said.

Boyd said VDOT’s new planning processes insure that they “are not going to build things in a vacuum anymore.”

Furthermore, he said his relationship with VDOT’s Culpeper District Administrator Jim Utterback gave him the confidence the department would deliver on its promises.

“Personally because I’ve known Jim Utterback for so many years I feel confident that he’s going to build us a road that improves the quality of life all along the route,” Boyd said.

Boyd said he believed the road could be built without disrupting the Forest Lakes community, whose residents have been vocal in their concerns about the project.

“The engineers say they can design this so it won’t affect Forest Lakes at all and it will all stay west of 29. We can work with them and design this so it won’t disrupt their neighborhood,” Boyd said.

Ultimately, Boyd said yesterday’s vote cleared the way for a long, collaborative effort to make a better transportation corridor.

“It’s going to be a design/build process and that gives us time for plenty of public input and plenty of input from the city and the Board of Supervisors. And we’ll all be part of the process of making the road the best it can be. That’s what VDOT has promised and I believe them.”

Some people (who are they?) probably relax and read books after their kid goes to bed, but not us. We like to poke around in the kitchen instead.

Here’s the scene from Tuesday night. (The large bottle of cheap wine is a key element.) We canned eight quarts of tomatoes, about 24 pounds’ worth. It’s glorious–big pots of watering boiling away on the stove, seeds and skins piling up on the counter, juice streaking down the cabinets.

Wednesday, we did carrots: six pints of curried carrot pickles, and two big bags of blanched and frozen ones for putting into soups.

Looks like Friday night we’ll be tackling another mammoth tomato project. They’re coming fast and furious on the vines outside, and meanwhile the CSA is loading us up with tons of their own ‘maters. (This is one of several points in the season when we confront the absurdity of both belonging to a CSA and growing a big garden.) The abundance can be dizzying, but I love it.

Bring on the produce! All hail summertime!

Taking a break from touring in 2011, are you Dave Matthews? My foot.

Announced through the Dave Matthews Band website this morning: Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds will play a charity gig at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion on August 20, the duo’s first show in town since 1994.

General public tickets go on sale beginning at 10am on Friday, August 5, at the DMB website. If you’re a member of the Warehouse fanclub, a ticket request period for the show opens at 10am on Friday, July 29, and ends at noon on Wednesday, August 3.

Details are here. 

After the Dave and Tim show, Warren Haynes Band—featuring Warren Haynes of Gov’t Mule and The Dead—plays at the Jefferson.

Both are charity shows run through JustGive.org, which allows concertgoers to direct the cost of their ticket to a charity of their choice. At a pair of December concerts in Seattle, Matthews and Reynolds raised $1 million for various charities, according to JustGive.

"Two Step."

The Western Bypass has become the hot button issue of the summer for county candidates. Following the Commonwealth Transportation Board’s allocation of $230 million for the road project, James Norwood, a Republican candidate for the Scottsville district of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, issued a statement calling for improvements to Route 20 and 53.

“I have travelled these roads for many years and truly find them to be unsafe as evident of all the loss of life memorials seen on the shoulders,” Norwood said, adding that he has personally purchased signs asking motorists to slow down while driving through town.

“Everyone in my district has been tailgated on Route 20. We need to expand to three lanes for the adequate distance in both directions to allow for slow moving vehicles to move to the right for vehicles traveling the posted speed limit … The Scottsville district won’t be at the back of the line for transportation funds on my watch.”  

Last night, Rivanna Supervisor Ken Boyd hosted a town hall meeting at Baker Butler Elementary School in Forest Lakes to discuss the design and engineering of the $250-million project.

Boyd was joined by three Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) staff members who helped clear up some misinformation about the Bypass’ northern terminus and the closure of Ashwood Blvd, which, according to Jim Utterback, “is not going to happen” as part of the project.

Although VDOT representatives insisted that the design process will include several opportunities for residents to voice their opinion, the more than 200 people who showed up wanted to know why the Board of Supervisors voted on the bypass before residents who will be directly affected had their say.

Boyd told the crowd that the late-night vote to resurrect the Bypass was the starting point for the discussion. After the vote, he said, there have been four public meetings on the matter.

For background on the Western Bypass, click here. Check Tuesday’s paper for more on the town hall meeting. 

One of the biggest misconceptions about the country singer Jonny Fritz is that, as Jonny Corndawg, he’s some kind of Weird "Al" Yankovich-style joke. His image, to say nothing of his name, doesn’t do much to help. In addition to writing R-rated country, Fritz does custom airbrush and leather-work (see his guitar), is a distant relative to David Allan Coe, runs marathons and sometimes tours by motorcycle.

Altogether, his brand is a kind of artful pastiche of rural American barroom culture in the 1980s. But catch one of his shows and it’s clear—even if the results are funny, Corndawg is serious. He sets the brow so low it’s high again.

It sounds like that will be true of his new album, Down on the Bikini Line, August 30 via his Nasty Memories label, which he calls a "big old middle finger" to his naysayers, the kind of record he’ll be happy to have on his coffee table 20 years from now.

I caught up with Jonny, who grew up in Esmont, over the phone this week for a Q&A before his show—as usual, he sticks out like a sore thumb on the bill—Sunday, July 31 at Alhamraa. Listen to a couple of songs here while reading the interview below.

I’ve read that you tour by motorcycle. Is that true?

I bought a minivan recently. I’ve got a band and so I’m pulling these guys around with me. I’ve got a fiddle player and a drummer I’m playing with these days. I’ve got to have something nicer than a bike. I’ve been playing so many shows lately, I’m just trying to be a little more comfortable on the road.

A minivan?

I’ve been making a joke about myself recently and pretty much anything that someone can ask me about my personality, I’ve got one response that seems to fit every answer, in the spirit of a Twitter hashtag. The answer is, "Dad Country." Man, I’ve got a minivan and I’m going Dad County. I’m wearing tennis shoes and a cowboy hat and it’s Dad County. No motorcycle, I’ve traded it in for some air-conditioned leather here. Just Dad Country.

You’ve got a new album, Down on the Bikini Line, coming out on August 30. Who is releasing it?

We did this Kickstarter campaign, raised $10,000 and started our own label called Nasty Memories Records. But in actuality the label that’s putting this record out is called Thirty Tigers. They have this wonderful business model—if you have a record that you know will do really well and you invest your own money into it, they will pretty much run the label for you. We were able to pay that because the pre-order and all the people who kicked in on the Kickstarter.

What do you hope will happen with it?

I’m not really concerned what it does in the first whatever—the album cycle or whatever. For me, it’s something I’m so proud of. It’s a classic record. That may sound cheesy, but it’s a classic record that’s going to speak for itself. Twenty years from now people are gonna hear and say, “That’s a good record.” Instead of being some buzzy Pitchfork band that may sell a lot of records right now, but in five years they’d be so embarrassed to have someone come over and see it sitting on the coffee table.

Just the fact that coming out is a pretty big accomplishment for me. It’s been a good year and a half—a good hundred meetings with a hundred different labels. A thousand e-mails and a hundred trippy phone calls, trying to figure out who wants to put this thing out. I’ve been really optimistic the whole but I’ve been endlessly discouraged by a lot of people. So the fact that it’s coming out is a fucking big old middle finger to everybody who said it wouldn’t happen.

It’s interesting that you say people said it wasn’t going to happen. What’s the nature of that anti-Corndawgism? 

It’s coming from the fact that my music is a little—you know, it’s not exactly the normal, everyday music. Nobody knows what to do with it. The labels are like, “What is it? Is it rock? Is it country? Is it indie? Is it comedy?” It’s like, “Goddamn it, why can’t it just be a record that you like? Why does it have to fit into a box? Can’t it be a record that you like to listen to?”

This has been reaffirmed by touring. I’ve been on bills with every kind of musician and every kind of act and in front of every kind of audience and it works anywhere where there’s somebody who’s willing to listen and appreciate it for what it is. And what it is is good music. And again, it sounds like Dad Country again, it sounds cheesy. But it’s just so true, I can’t deny it anymore. I’m not trying to force anything, I’m just trying to do what I do.

Will you always be Jonny Corndawg?

I was thinking before I put the record out, I wanted to drop the Corndawg thing before I moved any further because, you know, the Corndawg thing was just a mistake, just a nickname that stuck, it was a misinterpretation of a hat I had, about 10 years ago, and it just stuck around.

The Corndawg surname really primes your audience for a comedy act but I am always impressed to see the heart, and the degree to which you mean it, in your performances. It’s a surprise.

Yeah, it is a surprise. I’m kind of into that. It’s kind of a little experiment that I can’t get away from—I’m forced to be a part of. I like to play for as many different people as possible and not try to be put into that box and it’s always refreshing when people are like, “Wow—I’m a 55 year old white woman and I really liked your record,” and somebody’s like, “I’m a 15-year old teenager and I liked your record." I’m like, you all are coming from such different eras and you get into it. You’re not like, “What is this guy, this Corndawg? I don’t know about this.”

There’s been a lot of trying to figure out what it is. One thing that’s always stuck in my head is a quote from one of my favorite artists, John Hartford, and he says, “Be very careful what you become famous for.” And that’s why I was always worried about the Corndawg thing, but I’m not anymore. I just don’t think about it anymore, I just focus on the music.

Speaking about playing to a couple different audiences. With your bawdy content, do you ever find yourself in an awkward situation?

We were in Seaside, Florida and there were about 400 5-year-olds and it was brutal. Of course their parents were sitting down there in the lawn chairs and the kids were up front doing the chicken dance and mocking me. And it was so funny—goddamn, I lost it.

And you know, I’ve got a lot of children on the side—I did a kids’ set. But then also, I was like, I’ve got some married songs, so I’ll do some things for the folks there on the lawn chairs. And I felt a little bit like Bugs Bunny and Shrek in a way, you know how the duality of cartoons and how they’re meant for both the kids and the adults. I thought about it while I was playing—goddamn, I’m literally and figuratively going right over these kids’ heads and aiming back at their parents who were about 50 feet behind them. At the same time, I was aiming for the kids in the front.