Month: May 2013

Categories
News

Owner of experiential forest preschool launches Kickstarter campaign

Ruth Haske’s oldest daughter Maya waters the family garden, which will be instrumental at the new Ivy Forest School. Photo: Ruth Haske

After a long day cooped up inside, Ruth Haske’s 4-year-old daughter was ecstatic to get outdoors when the thunder subsided last week. She bounded down the steps to help her dad take a bag of garbage to the compost pit, and stopped to check the status of her beet seedlings in the family’s garden before heading back to the house. The compost pit and vegetable garden are not only everyday essentials in the Haske household, but they’ll soon double as a classroom.

Haske and her husband bought three and a half acres of property west of the city last year with a plan to open a “forest school” for children under 5. It’s been about a year since the family of four moved into the cottage-like home perched on a steep wooded hill off Route 637, and Haske is accepting applications to the school for this coming fall.

The children at Ivy Forest School, ages 2-5, will explore outside every day, rain or shine. Too many kids associate education with being cooped up inside at a desk all day, Haske said.

“The rules are different when you’re outside,” she said.

A native of England and an educator of 12 years, Haske said she’s been inspired by European forest school programs, and particularly the Italians’ Reggio Emilia approach, which fosters education through exploration and sensory experiences.

“It’s this idea that the forest, or the woodlands, or wherever you are, is the classroom in itself,” she said. “The kids aren’t sitting in desks, but are really integrated into the environment.”

A typical morning at Ivy Forest School will start out like any other preschool class: circle time, a story, and a quick discussion about the plan for the day. Haske will then take the kids outside, where they’ll make mud pies, count pine cones, make up stories about birds, build fairy houses, stomp in puddles, or taste blueberries and mint leaves straight from the pick-and-eat garden.

The kids will play and learn outside in all climates, Haske said, even during the cold months. She ran a free forest play group before the family moved, and said parents were skeptical and hesitant to let their kids out in the dreary, soggy weather. But with the proper clothes, sloshing around in mud puddles is both fun and safe.

“There’s something to be said for having the right gear,” said Haske, who recalled watching a group of puffy, waterproof toddlers in gloves and rain pants have the time of their lives during a downpour last year. “We just pulled off all the clothes, then we came inside and had warm tea.”

Haske can accommodate five children, not including her own 2-year-old, every day Monday through Friday. Future plans include licensing, which will allow her to accept up to 12 kids. But for now, her short-term goal is to raise $12,000 to build a platform quilted yurt, which will house mats for napping and basic, natural toys like wooden blocks and silk pieces, and an open space for indoor quiet time. She launched a KickStarter campaign this week, and hopes to have the yurt up and running in time for school this fall. 

Haske will start out as the school’s sole teacher, but hopes to get parents invested and involved in a cooperative set-up. Parents who can devote one day a week to helping out at the school each week will receive a discount on the $48 per day tuition.

“I really want to get the parents involved,” she said. “I want this to be a team effort.”

Categories
Arts

ARTS Picks: Luke Winslow-King at The Garage

Up-and-comer Luke Winslow-King relies on NOLA musical connections and respect for tradition in his mastery of the blues. Photo by Jason Kruppa.

Drawing on lessons learned while busking on Frenchmen Street, training in classical music at the University of New Orleans, and working as a music therapist in New York City, Luke Winslow-King has a boiled-down, Delta blues, gospel, and jazz-themed new album, The Coming Tide, that has made fans of rock and blues heavyweights like Jack White and Robert Earl Keen. Catch LWK’s slide guitar flurries, improvised lyrics, and endearing boy-girl harmonies before he leaves intimate venues behind for the international touring circuit.

Sunday 5/19 Free, 7pm. The Garage, 250 First St. www.thegarage-cville.com.

 

Categories
Living

Love what you do…And other lessons learned on a trip to Puerto Vallarta

During the group’s trip to the Herradura Distillery in Jalisco, a jimador showed them how to break down the agaves to their piñas. Photo: Nick Crutchfield

Three days into my trip to Puerto Vallarta, I had an ephiphany. I’d traveled there with the Tequila Interchange Project, a nonprofit group working to preserve sustainable, traditional, and quality practices in the tequila industry, and we would spend seven days drinking the Mexican juice and learning about the process of making it. But my ephiphany had less to do with the mission and more to do with the realization that I was about to spend the next four days geeking out over tequila with the industry’s elite on the trip of a lifetime.

On Monday morning, we departed early for the town of Mal Paso. It’s a humdinger of a drive from Puerto Vallarta and off-roading in a tour bus was quite the rush. After arriving at the tabernas, we met with two Raicilleros—Don Japo and Don Niko. It was here where I felt like we’d stepped into a time machine, witnessing and taking part in some of the oldest and most traditional ways of distilling not only in Mexico, but in the world. The stills were built of earth, wood, and copper. The water was straight from the source. The fermentation was completely natural. The distilling, done twice, was craftsmanship at its finest. We tasted, we learned the pearl testing, we helped crush agave, and even removed the borgaz (the leftover product in the stills) from the kettles. Then, we tasted some more.

Wednesday was the beginning of our mezcal adventures. We traveled a couple of hours to the Zapotitlan area and rolled onto a ranch, where we partook in the process and witnessed the creation of an agave distillate. The United States consumes 80 percent of all agave distillates created, but this particular concoction can’t be called what it is (mezcal) due to the Mexican government and the larger tequila houses blocking these folks from having a Denomination of Origin, but it’s made in the tradition of the more than seven generations who have harvested and distilled on this particular site. While we worked, we listened to the concerns and needs of the producers for their segment of the industry, mostly how it’s regulated by the government.

Thursday, when we awoke after a night of driving, tacos al pastor, and muchos cervezas, we headed down the streets of Tequila to Fortaleza, a smaller producer with deep roots in the industry. It was nothing like the large producers: There were small ovens, a tahona stone (the wheel that crushes the pinas), and smaller vats for fermenting. There weren’t any tanker trucks pulling in and out. The aging rooms were small and quaint. The distillery had a dog too, a happy, goofy boxer that followed us everywhere. Family and tradition are strong here; you could see how happy the workers were without it feeling like it was a show.

We ended the day in Tequila with tacos, but not before heading to one of the most important places for a bartender in the town: El Bar La Capilla. The purveyor of this small joint is Don Javier Delgado Corona. He is 89 years old and still comes to his bar daily. He’s a living legend. He invented the Batanga (like a Cuba Libre, but with tequila, Mexican Coca Cola, and salt). He stirs the drink with a boning knife and serves it with a genuine smile. The man is amazing, warm, funny, and full of so much information and history. He told us that he and his father started out as coopers for the the tequila houses. The man has seen it all and is very open to sharing his knowledge. If you are ever lucky enough to get to Tequila, I cannot stress enough how empowering and important it is to visit this place. He will touch a piece of your soul.

The last day of our trip took us to Santa Rita, the oldest known production site for agave distillate in Mexico, and Guadalajara, where we’d sit in on a round table of five of GDL’s best bartenders. I call Santa Rita the genesis site of the spirit: old fermentation holes chiseled into the ground, a large horno that cooked what looked like about three tons at a time, a tahona and crushing pit in between. The site dates back to the pre-Hispanic colonization of Mexico, which accounts for the Asian influence in distillation methods.

Now that I’m home (and missing my Mexican adventure), I have a lot of work to do. I’ll start spreading the gospel with this one word: sip. Sip the next tequila you purchase. Sip it neat, without lime or sprinkle of salt. I’ll be there to pour. If there’s one thing I learned from Don Javier, it’s that I’m lucky to do what I love.

Nick Crutchfield is the bar manager at Commonwealth Restaurant & Skybar.

Categories
News

As dome nears completion, a new chapter begins for Rotunda

UVA's Rotunda. Photo: Dan Addison, UVA Public Affairs.

Jody Lahendro has led a lot of curious locals up the 61′ of creaking scaffolding that has surrounded UVA’s Rotunda for a year. Most recently, it was a group that had won a private tour at an auction to raise money for the iconic structure’s ongoing renovation. Once the visitors emerged at the lip of the 20′ dome, the Lawn stretching out below, they didn’t pay much attention to the top of the building above and behind them.

“They just wanted to see the view,” said Lahendro, a historic preservation architect for Facilities Management at the University and manager of the renovation project.

But when he climbed back up Wednesday, the day before the scaffolding started coming down, Lahendro had eyes only for the new dome.

“This,” he said, gesturing broadly, “is our copper roof.”

Repairs to the damaged dome have been underway for a year, part of a $50.6 million overhaul of the Rotunda. More than 100 tradesmen have toiled on the resurfacing project in recent months, racing to finish ahead of schedule so the building at the heart of Jefferson’s Academical Village could preside over Final Exercises this weekend in all its unencumbered glory.

Blame the weather for the fact that it will still be crowned in shiny copper when the class of 2013 graduates. It’s due for a coating of primer and protective paint, which will ultimately render it white. But the two-step process demands a totally dry dome, and the outlook at the start of last week was decidedly soggy.

“Too many resources have been invested in the project to screw it up now,” Lahendro said.

At UVA, building for the future—the current dome is expected to last 100 years or more—requires a lot of looking back. But the team of preservationists and architects in charge of the care and keeping of Grounds aren’t sure exactly what the original Rotunda dome looked like.

“We have no good photographic archival documentation of what was here before the fire of 1895,” Lahendro said, but they knew it was built with wood supports and covered with metal shingles. The infamous blaze left the Rotunda a smoking ruin, and ushered in a new era at the growing University. Renowned late 19th century architect Stanford White left his own stamp on the building, including a new copper-topped dome ringed with a series of built-in step-like supports.

“The steps kind of came down and flared out,” Lahendro said. “It was very sensuous, a lovely profile. But everyone knew it was not what Jefferson designed.”

In 1976, restorers used Jefferson’s drawings to reconstruct what they believed was a more accurate silhouette from concrete and steel. Two years ago, experts sawed downward through the tiers and layers and found the dome was rusting from the inside out. Enter Lynch Roofing, whose local experts demolished and rebuilt the lower tiers and covered the entire thing with White’s material of choice: hand-shaped sheets of copper.

Everywhere are details most people will never see up close: hundreds of carefully crimped copper seams; a new skylight with glass shaded to mimic the overlapping panes of Jefferson’s time. Such touches are just the latest in a history of changes, adjustments, and repairs that stretches back to the father of American neoclassical architecture himself. Part of the challenge and beauty of preservation work is understanding the intricacies of that history, Lahendro explained. With $42 million worth of work left to do on the Rotunda’s interior, there’s plenty of project left ahead, “and we’re still discovering things,” he said.

Categories
Arts

Breathless: Godard’s French New Wave classic hits Vinegar Hill for one night only

Put on your black turtleneck and just try to resist Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in Godard's Breathless, playing at Vinegar Hill Theatre this Thursday, May 16, for one night only.

Before there was Netflix or On Demand, or even Sneak Reviews, the only way to see an older movie was to catch a second screening at a movie house. Vinegar Hill, the local theater with a penchant for art house classics and independent film releases, is reviving the tradition for a one night only screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s harbinger of cinematic revolution, Breathless (À bout de soufflé, 1960) on May 16.

“It’s the best way to see a movie anyway, with a crowd” said C-VILLE Weekly’s own James Ford, who is also one of Vinegar Hill Theatre’s four staffers, a group of self-admitted “movie nerds” responsible for the pick.

Breathless may be a fixture on film school syllabi, but Ford says he’s been surprised at how many people he has met in promoting the event that have never heard of it. He hopes the classic film series will bring together film buffs and casual popcorn eaters, and that it will expose a new generation of moviegoers to the classics. The film is Godard’s first feature, and is credited for launching La Nouvelle Vague (the French New Wave), filmmakers of the late ’50s and ’60s dedicated to experimental film form, editing, and sound, and engagement with social and political commentary.

“I love everything I’ve seen by Godard, Vivre Sa Vie [To Live One’s Life, 1962], Masculin féminin [Masculine Feminine: 15 Precise Facts, 1966].” said Ford. “[Breathless] changed cinema forever; people around the world are still making movies today that are influenced by it. It feels like seeing a movie for the first time.”

It’s a crime story, it’s a love story, and it’s a great date movie, if you don’t mind your date falling in love with Jean-Paul Belmondo’s pouty-lipped attitude, or Jean Seberg’s pixie bohemian charm (or both). Depending on how the seats are filled on Thursday, these one-off screenings may become a regular monthly occurrence.

Buying a ticket to the series is also an opportunity to support Vinegar Hill, now part of the Visulite Cinemas family of theaters, through a perilous time—the zoned historic building which houses the theater is up for sale, leaving Vinegar Hill renting month to month and unsure if their lease will be renewed past August.

Vinegar Hill just launched online ticketing (finally), making advance tickets available at http://www.visulitecinemas.com/specialevents.asp.

Thursday 5/16 $7.50-10.50, 7pm. Vinegar Hill Theatre, 220 W Market St., 977-4911.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJFFy3soy9Y

Categories
Arts

The power of poetry: Christian Wiman fuels his writing with renewed faith

46-year-old Christian Wiman returned to his roots and reclaimed Christianity through poetry when confronted with a rare cancer diagnosis. Publicity photo.

Christian Wiman is the celebrated author of three books of poetry whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and The New York Times Book Review. He is also the editor of Poetry magazine—a position he will relinquish in June to join the faculty of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School—but gained attention nearly six years ago for reclaiming his Christian faith in an essay for the American Scholar.

Last month, Wiman followed up on that controversial revelation with a book of prose called My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer. On Wednesday, May 15, at 7pm, he will be on hand for “And I Was Alive: Faith in a Faithless Time,” a lecture and Q&A in the Christ Church Sanctuary. C-VILLE talked with him by phone about what a contemporary faith looks like, or as he told me, “one that’s responsible to science and to art and to all these other experiences we have that seem to negate faith as it’s been traditionally defined.”

 

C-VILLE Weekly: Do you give many talks like the one you’ll be doing here, and if so, what value do you see in it?

Christian Wiman: “Yeah, it’s become more important recently to have that direct contact with audiences. Writing is such a solitary business and so much of what I’ve been writing about recently—in the prose at least —is about the ways in which faith is both a solitary and communal experience, and it’s been important for me to have that communal experience attached to my work. These issues of faith demand to be shared. You can’t just have a solitary experience of faith.”

 In your 2007 essay “Gazing into the Abyss,” you made a very public profession of a return to Christianity. How was that received by your peers?

“I think artists are generally people of faith, even if they don’t define their faith as conforming to Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, but I find it rare or to the point of nonexistence that a real writer would ever be an atheist. It seems to me that there is always some element of faith that’s being expressed in their work. They may not believe in a certain god, but they have faith in something beyond themselves and their work. And so I haven’t found any negative reaction among artists.”

In that essay, you wrote: “Poetry is how religious feeling has survived in me.” Is it easier to rectify faith with a higher form of art like poetry than, say, rock and roll?

“You know, I wish I could be a rock and roll singer. I don’t really know what that would be like. I suspect that it’s different in the life that it leads to—it’s so public and there are so many temptations—but it’s probably not as different in the actual creative moments. I’m sure that great songwriters have the same experience as great poets. What they feel when they are actually creating is in touch with something that is completely outside themselves.”

With your return to faith, are you a different type of believer than you would have been earlier in life?

“That’s hard for me to say because the only other type of belief I know is the fundamentalist kind that I grew up with. For years, I would’ve said I wasn’t a believer but then I wouldn’t have said I didn’t believe in God. It seemed so obvious to me that the art I was reading and making led to something called God. At some point, I needed to formalize the faith to give it a language and that’s what Christianity has enabled me to do. I do think what I experience now is completely different from anything I would have been led to 10 or 15 years ago.”

Like you, I was raised in a really religious household and at some point moved away from it. One reason is that it was difficult for me to reconcile my artistic tastes with my more traditional religious beliefs. Was that a strain for you as well?

“Yes, I frequently find art and orthodoxy at odds with each other. I think each actually has a lot to learn from the other. Art loses a lot when it gives up an orthodox understanding of God, but orthodoxy loses a hell of a lot when it gives up the insights of artists. There’s some meeting ground between the two but I do understand the tension.”

Is there a new generation of Christian that doesn’t feel the same tension between art and Christianity?

“Yeah, I think that’s very true and perceptive. I still find the strain between orthodoxy and art but I think there are a lot of Christians that are very open to art that is not necessarily Christian and are finding ways of incorporating that art into their spiritual lives.”

You’ll be giving your lecture in a university town. Are you finding that college-age adults are more open to faith than was the case 20 years ago?

“Definitely. I don’t know that there’s a return to Christianity per se. Liberal Protestantism seems to be dying, but there does seem to me to be an enormous contingent of people out there that are starving for some way of finding meaning in their lives.”

 

 An Evening with Christian Wiman May 15, Free, 7pm. Christ Episcopal Church, 310 N High St., (540) 832-3209.

 

 Do you have personal reflections on the intersection of art and faith? Tell us about it in the comments section below…

Categories
News

The 2013 UVA Issue: Four dialogues changing Mr. Jefferson’s University

Photo: John Robinson.

“What do you think?”

Four undergrads—all science majors and members of a UVA genetic engineering competition team—had gathered around a second-floor conference room table in the Physical and Life Sciences building for much of the afternoon to debate project concepts. They were getting ready to pick one project—heavy stuff like creating miniature cells from modified bacteria that can deliver antibiotics, using microbes to stop gene expression—and run with it to work on through the summer and fall to turn it from idea into reality.

As they sit around post-meeting to scarf cookies, prop their feet on the table, and talk to a reporter about their self-directed research, about beating MIT at last year’s regional competition, and about changing the world with science, a question from an older team member came from across the room: “What do you think?”

Did they like the competitive nature of the idea selection process, the way they had split into groups, worked all semester on proposals, and were now arguing for the survival of their own projects?

There was a pause before they chimed in, just long enough for the words to hang in the air for a moment.

“What do you think?”

A mundane little sentence, maybe. A simple conversational turn. But is there any question more basic to an institution devoted to disseminating knowledge? Research, read, write, process, teach, tell, but above all, ask: What do you think?

For this year’s UVA issue, which hits stands as another crop of students gets ready to turn their tassels, we sought out some of the most interesting discussions happening on Grounds. The biology and engineering undergrads putting their heads together to develop a new drug delivery system. A new wave of Darden thinkers figuring out how to teach innovation. Black historians exploring the future of race relations by turning a documentarian’s eye on the University’s past. Professors pushing the boundaries of the classroom and teaching tens of thousands of eager students online. Ask them “What do you think?” and you can bet you’ll want to stick around for the answer. Stories by Graelyn Brashear and Laura Ingles.

Bright young things: UVA’s self-directed synthetic biology stars

Members of UVA’s iGEM team, a student group that tackles complex synthetic biology challenges in an annual international competition, are in the process of selecting a project that they’ll work to develop for the next six months. Photo: Elli Williams

 

Idea, inc.: Darden’s iLab incubator opens its doors to entrepreneurs from UVA and beyond

JR Gentle, creator of a local music streaming site called GigDog, is a member of the first class of entrepreneurs at Darden’s newly revamped iLab. Photo: Elli Williams

Black progress: As enrollment drops, African-American faculty and students try to preserve culture

For the filming of Sugar Coated Arsenic, UVA students dressed in ’70s swag and said they felt a new connection to Black culture as a result of the project. Photo: Magdeldin Hamid

When a MOOC is more than a MOOC: How online learning is shifting the academic goalposts at UVA

UVA professor Lou Bloomfield demonstrates the laws of physics at play in everyday activities while filming video for the online version of his popular "How Things Work" course. Photo: John Robinson

Categories
Arts

ARTS Picks: August: Osage County

Bill Rough puts the fun in dysfunctional as a family is forced to gather under extraordinary circumstances in Live Arts’ August: Osage County. Publicity Photo.

Live Arts takes an ambitious foray into the comically dysfunctional dark side of a pill-popping, secret-keeping Midwestern family in its spring production of August: Osage County, under the direction of Fran Smith. This Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Tracy Letts gives an all-access peek (the set is a literal cross section of a three-story Oklahoma homestead) into the lives of the estranged Weston clan as they are forced to reunite after their father goes missing.

Through 6/5  $20-25, times vary. Live Arts, 123 E. Water St. 977-4177.

 

Categories
The Editor's Desk

Editor’s Note: Free content isn’t really free

Lou Bloomfield. Photo: John Robinson.

Way back when Playboy started, Hugh Hefner expertly surfed the wave of a sexual and social revolution, selling cigarettes and Scotch via Mad Men-designed print adverts paired with corny profiles of topless coeds and Vargas girls. The setup made enough money to get him rich and to pay for 5,000-word interviews with Jim Brown on the white man’s burden or John Wayne on why hippies should be shot. Pick up a copy from 1972 at Ike’s Underground and you can read the debate over the Vietnam War or the legalization of marijuana in the letters’ section. It’s a trip.

The company hasn’t fared too well in the digital environment, and in 2011 Playboy Enterprises Inc. undertook a massive reorganization, slashing its staff by 75 percent and moving its headquarters to L.A. Licensing, not content, is the new name of the company’s topline/bottomline game, which may explain how it managed to name UVA the top party school in the country last year. While the sports at TJU aren’t up to snuff, the Google reporting explained, the sex and drinking life more than compensate.

Our UVA feature this week highlights a few things happening on Grounds that Playboy’s staff writers missed. Did they know, for instance, that the frats aren’t allowed to haze anymore or that undergrads are helping to eradicate whooping cough? Anyway, the piece about Lou Bloomfield’s MOOC “How Things Work” got me thinking. The prof spends 1,000 hours designing a class that draws 50,000 students to his virtual classroom, and he doesn’t get paid for it.

Meanwhile, down in the Bayou, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ longtime daily newspaper owned by the Newhouse family since 1962, announced that its tragic experiment to go digital had failed and that it would return to daily print production. During the about face, the company lost its content monopoly. Maybe we should update the whole “freedom isn’t free,” thing. Free isn’t even free. Can someone in Darden’s i.Lab run the topline/bottomline on that?

 

Categories
Arts

Mountain magic: A wealth of talent with local roots graces C’ville stages

Mountain Man’s Alex Sauser-Monnig (left) and Amelia Meath have played Charlottesville twice before, their unamplified voices soared to the heavens at The Garage and at Christ Church. The Haven, a secular space with religious affiliations and history (as well as stellar acoustics), seems like the perfect spot for these hymn-haunted songs. Publicity Photo.

Despite the band name, Mountain Man is actually a musical group of young women: Molly Sarle, Alex Sauser-Monnig, and Amelia Meath. The trio began singing together as students at Bennington College in 2009, and quickly got the attention of the music world, first by touring alone, and later with The Decemberists, members of Sigur Rós, and as a backing band for Feist. It’s not hard to tell why the act rose to fame so quickly—one listen is enough to make you a fan. Singing in an otherworldly vocal harmony (as if one brain was commanding three mouths) in a cappella, or with minimal backing, they sound like the ghost of Appalachian gospel folk.

While the trio’s spooky and beautiful songs are filled with references to music that is a century old, Mountain Man is difficult to pigeonhole as a revival act. The songs (all originals) are too peculiar and surreal to be mistaken for wayward outtakes in Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. The lyrics, in particular, signify the work of three women who attended a liberal arts college in the 21st century, and often seem to imply a daydream or a private joke.

Ultimately, they combine the most winning aspects of multiple eras to create music that is timeless, reveling in the possibilities allowed by the voice, overwhelmingly sweet and wistful, and often veering into the sad, the silly, or the joyous.

Two-thirds of the group, Suaser-Monnig and Meath, will perform on May 17 at The Haven. Sauser-Monnig has lived in Charlottesville for several years, while Meath occasionally traveled through when touring with other acts. The Haven, a secular space with religious affiliations and history (as well as stellar acoustics), seems like the perfect spot for these hymn-haunted songs.

They share a bill with Erik the Red, another golden-voiced singer who evokes the past, now fronting the trio Red and the Romantics. The group recently released the record Franklin Street, which perfectly captures its easygoing charm, and showcases Red’s Leon Redbone-esque vocals.

Baltimorian songwriter Caleb Stein rounds out the line-up. Tickets are $10, doors open at 7pm, and refreshments will be available. The Haven’s acoustic showcase launches an annual series of musical fundraisers for the shelter, with all proceeds going towards its mission of providing a resource center and day shelter for the area’s homeless.

Dues paying off

Also on May 17, a solid line-up of locals grace the stage of The Southern.

The Hill and Wood, led by Sam Bush, released its debut in 2011 and have been logging time on the road since, solidifying a live show, appearing at South By Southwest, CMJ, and The Kennedy Center, and recording a Daytrotter session. “We’ve since spent much more time together as a band,” Bush said, “playing about 50 shows a year, many of which have involved long drives through the night. I think those moments are just as important as practicing in some ways. When you see someone at their worst, that’s when you really get to know them. Seeing them at four in the morning without having showered for three days and maybe feeling a little homesick. Knowing each other in that way somehow helps us sound better on stage. The most valuable part so far has been that slow and patient process of getting to know ourselves as a band.” The Hill and Wood is currently in the early stages of recording its sophomore album at local White Star Sound studio.

GEMS is the newest project of Clifford Usher and Lindsay Pitts, well-known to many locals for the years playing together under the name BirdLips. After departing Charlottesville, living on tour, and recording at various spots from the road, Usher and Pitts settled in D.C. last year and decided to give their musical collaboration a clean slate. The shift isn’t just a band name change, but a new direction for the duo. “GEMS is indeed a new band, with all new material,” Pitts said. “It’s definitely a different sound. Much louder and more expansive than what we were doing before. More of a visceral experience, less from the head and more from the heart. I think people who have not seen us as GEMS will be very surprised.”

Dead Professional is another new name for a familiar face, John Harouff, one half of the Cinnamon Band and a former member of Staunton-based noise-rock trio The Union of a Man and a Woman. After debuting on the Southern stage during the Tom Tom Festival, Dead Professional returns, showcasing Harouff’s songs backed by a series of loops and pedals.

Tickets are $8 in advance and $10 at the door, show begins at 8pm.

 

Share your band’s road trip stories with us in the comments section below…