Month: November 2013

Categories
Living

Aquarian Bookshop brings first psychic festival to Downtown Mall

Paige, who's been doing readings for 30 years and working at Aquarian Bookshop since its opening last year, lays out her Tarot cards. Photo: Elli Williams -

Paige is calm and serene as she spreads the cards out between us in a rough diamond shape. She nods, and murmurs “oh, that’s beautiful” when she flips over a card on the left that reveals a sun. She smiles, points to the card in the center of the table, and looks at me.

“That’s the chariot card, in the middle,” she says. “It’s the triumph of light, and it means you’re in transition.”

I’m sitting at a small round table covered in purple velvet, next to the window in the Aquarian Bookshop on the Downtown Mall. Paige, who’s been doing readings for more than 30 years, is patiently walking me through my first encounter with a Tarot deck. She’s answering my questions, and not even remotely pushy—which, as a skeptic, I appreciate.

The shop’s walls are lined with decks of Tarot cards, baskets of healing stones, and jewelry featuring protective evil eyes. The thick books on the shelves cover everything from astrology to witchcraft, and psychics like Paige are available for daily readings. On Saturday, November 23, in conjunction with the Society for Awakening Souls at UVA, the shop will open its doors for the first psychic festival in Charlottesville.

The Downtown branch of Aquarian Bookshop—sister of the Carytown location in Richmond—opened its doors in October 2012. Paige, whose return to Charlottesville after a decade away aligned with the opening of the shop, said the local response has been astounding.

“I’ve never seen such a diverse and plentiful community of metaphysical people as in Charlottesville,” she said. “It’s truly been a blessing to work here and do these readings.”

I’ll be the first to admit that when I originally heard the phrase “psychic festival,” I envisioned the Downtown Mall engulfed in mystical decorations, women in flowy-sleeved dresses prancing around with spirit fingers, and crystal balls in every corner. Turns out it’s going to be a little less Renaissance than I imagined, but in the name of full disclosure, participating psychics and guests are encouraged to dress as their favorite totems. (Paige plans to show up as a raven.)

Beginning at 11am on Saturday, psychics, palm readers, Tarot readers, clairvoyants, astrologists, energy healers, and massage therapists will be available for 15-minute individual consultations. Each session will cost $15, and according to Aquarian owner and detective psychic John Olliver, 100 percent of the proceeds will go to the Mary Duty Cherokee Nation Education Fund to provide scholarships for Native American students.

“It’s an easy way for someone who has no experience with psychic readings to come in and have some fun. And even if they’re skeptical or not into it, the money is going to a very good cause,” Oliver said. “And I’m hoping that for people who are really looking for something, that the festival can be a first step for them in finding that as well.”

Oliver, who travels the country delivering seminars on meditation and “the other side,” has given more than 13,000 personal readings to individuals over the years. And as a psychic detective he’s had two TV shows and worked on high-profile cold cases like JonBenet Ramsey’s murder and Natalee Holloway’s disappearance.

Oliver isn’t offended by skeptics like me, and said most people he encounters are at least open to the idea of psychic work. But just as every client who walks through the door for a reading has a different story, psychics are not all one and the same.

For instance there’s Maria Montoni, who identifies as a professional lightworker and has participated in the Richmond Psychic Festival for years. She draws on witchcraft, telekinesis, and years of training with Richmond’s Spiritual Mind Center to predict for and protect her clients. Montoni said she feels a heightened sense of responsibility as her abilities continue to evolve, and she worries that the psychic world is becoming too cluttered with con-artists.

Then there’s Paige, who feels a distinct connection to her ancestry through her decks of cards and has been quietly doing Tarot readings for her friends and family since high school. She’s not interested in predicting details of the the future, and says clients can take as much or as little away from a reading as they want, depending on what they’re willing to share with her. Not unlike picking the right dentist or therapist, it’s all about finding the one you’re comfortable with, who uses a method you can understand.

I lean forward and point to another black and white card, asking what the numbers and illustration of swords could mean.

“Fairness and truth are important to you, and you can see through illusions,” Paige says. “You can feel when things are not as they appear.”

She also accurately tells me that I’m assertive, often frustrated by those I perceive as weak, and influenced heavily by my father. O.K., so that’s pretty spot on. Once half an hour has passed and the cards have returned to their drawstring bag, it occurs to me that the whole encounter is more akin to a casual chat with an old friend than a psychic reading. There’s no pomp, no circumstance. No dramatic pause while she holds her forehead in her hands, asking the spirits for an answer or gazing bug-eyed at the ceiling. She doesn’t expect the cards to outline every detail about my future, but as I watch and share small details about my own life, we’re able to make connections between the cards.

“It’s really just confirming what we already know,” Paige says.

I’m still not entirely sure I buy into it. But I can at least wrap my head around a stack of cards deriving different meaning for each person, and it’s fun to watch and make connections to my own life as the cards fall.

Categories
Arts

Interview: Daniel Bachman digs deep into folk music’s past

Daniel Bachman plays guitar in the American primitive style, a genre coined by John Fahey and made notable by its traditional country blues fingerpicking.

Daniel Bachman is a 24-year-old fingerpicking guitarist whose style is often compared to American Primitive musicians like John Fahey and Jack Rose. Bachman’s signature layered tones are in fine form on his fourth full length album, Jesus I’m a Sinner, and his fall tour will make its final stop at the Tea Bazaar on November 22.

C-VILLE Weekly caught up with the Fredericksburg native (now residing in Chapel Hill, North Carolina) to talk about his fixation with historic Virginia and overwrought descriptions of his music.

C-VILLE Weekly: Could you talk a little bit about your new album?

Daniel Bachman: It’s kind of all over the place. There are about three tunes that are in a similar vibe as the last couple of albums. There’s more slide guitar stuff, and also a bunch of duets with a fiddle player and banjo player from Virginia and North Carolina, Sally Anne Morgan and Charlie Devine. It’s a little different, it’s kind of a jollier record than I’ve done before. There’s more traditional music than I’ve ever put on a record before, too.

 When reviewing albums like yours, writers use lengthy emotional or sensory terms like, “it’s an aching feeling of dreams unfulfilled.” 

Totally. [laughs]

What if the description doesn’t feel right for your music?

I know how hard it is to get people to listen to your records, and people need tags for stuff. I understand why it happens. I just wish that it could be as simple as: Daniel is a guitar player. This is his guitar music. If you like it, cool. If you don’t, try another kind of guitar music. Or maybe, don’t try guitar music ever again.

There are a few names I recognize in your music, like the mountain from “Sun Over Old Rag.” Do you go exploring around Virginia?

I’ve driven around there a lot. I’ve got funny memories of going to Rappahannock and getting frustrated recording. [laughs] I moved to North Carolina for cheaper rent and the possibility of going back to college in a couple of years, but I could see myself moving to Fredericksburg and raising a family when I’m ready.

I’ve read that you have a special interest in Virginia’s history with respect to the Civil War.

My family house is on a campsite for the Battle of Fredericksburg. I grew up with that stuff. We used to go around hunting for that stuff a lot. My dad’s a paleontologist, and he’s really into Indian and Civil War stuff. I used to go metal detecting with him, and digging up stuff. I like a lot of the names.

Or the music of it?

Yeah. [laughs] It sounds dumb, but a lot of these terms and names just fit well with the music and the area that I was living in at that time.

Your song titles overlap with nature, kind of like music for long drives through the Shenandoah or something.

That’s kind of the only music I can make right now, because I’m driving so goddamn much. It’s kind of influenced everything. I wish that I could make cruise music for truck drivers, like Waylon Jennings or something, but I can’t do that. I can only make sensitive, contemplative music for long drives.

It’s a specific style that you’ve mastered. Is there any other kind of playing that you’re curious about? 

I really, really want to learn how to play the clawhammer banjo. You can YouTube it, there are like, a million videos. It’s just a traditional style of playing that’s really rhythmic, and it’s the exact opposite way of how I play. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to learn it—you don’t pick, you pretty much just ball your hand up and beat it against the string.

What got you into the fingerpicking style?

I used to go to a lot of shows in D.C. when I was in Baltimore growing up. I saw a couple guys playing like that, but it never really did anything for me. And then this one John Fahey record—it just blew me away. I went home, and pretty much immediately started trying to figure out how to play like that, and just got stuck. I can’t get out of it. I’ll never play anything else.

Categories
Arts

John Grisham looks back on his 20-year journey from small town lawyer to literary titan

Sebastian Arcelus, who played Jake Brigance in Rupert Holmes’ 2013 adaptation of A Time to Kill on Broadway, greets John Grisham during the play’s opening night curtain call. The production closed November 17, just four weeks after it opened, and met with mixed reviews. Photo: Patrick McMullan.

John Grisham is serious about time. He doesn’t like long books, or long interviews, or long meetings. His life is tightly scheduled. He still wakes up early in the morning to write for three or four hours, the maximum he says he can perform the task efficiently. Then, normally, he heads to his office off the Downtown Mall, where he spends a couple of hours working on the business side of his business. I recently got an hour with him there.

The office feels like something out of The Devil’s Advocate, a perfectly decorated empty boardroom with a giant conference table. It’s a monument to success or it’s the law office he would have run had things gone that way. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. On his daily docket, our appointment would be followed by a conference call and then a fundraiser lunch for Terry McAuliffe. Bill Clinton would be there. Grisham is a major Democratic donor.

“You get tired of all the phone calls. Everybody asking for money,” he said. “There are no limits in Virginia so they ask for big checks. There should be limits.”

After McAuliffe was elected governor, Grisham was named to his inauguration committee. Such is his influence. Like a lot of people in the past month, I wanted to talk to the South’s bestselling author about how far he had come in the 20 years since he went from being a struggling courthouse lawyer in a small Mississippi town to one of the greatest literary businessmen in history.

“You’re one of the top sellers of all time aren’t you,” I asked, right at the beginning of our conversation. In part, I was ignorant of the answer and in part I was confused by how the industry measures that kind of thing.

“Behind who? Agatha Christie and who?” Grisham said, bemused.

“I don’t know. J.K. Rowling?” I said. “I don’t know what the stats are.”

Grisham speaks with a folksy Mississippi accent that makes him sound less intense than he is. His eyes are cool, and wander, then drill into you. I’ve had the same feeling sitting across from self-made millionaires before, but never with an author.

“The stats will drive you crazy,” he said. “Because I’ve been asked several times if I’m in the top five best selling authors in the world, and I always say, ‘I have no idea.’ You can look at the numbers any way you want to look at them. I think Agatha Christie is over 2 billion books and that’s one way of looking at it and she’s probably tops. If you look at when they publish a book who actually sells the most of each book it’s gotta be Harry Potter… or Dan Brown. The Da Vinci Code sold 12 million hardback copies. Anyway, that wasn’t your question…”

If a writer who has sold over 300 million books can have a bugaboo, Grisham’s may have been resurrected by his recent literary return to Clanton, Mississippi, the site of his first book, A Time to Kill, which tells the story of Carl Lee Hailey, a black father who kills two white men for brutally raping his 10-year-old daughter.

“I’ve had people…well-meaning people… say why don’t you go back and write like you did with A Time to Kill. And I always say to myself—I don’t engage people like that or argue with them—I didn’t change anything. The Firm was a deliberate effort to be more commercial and more popular because A Time to Kill did not sell,” he told me.

Grisham’s latest book, Sycamore Row, hit stores in late October, climbing very quickly to the top of the bestseller list and garnering almost universally positive reviews. A bit of a media frenzy followed the release, in part because the book is the sequel to A Time to Kill, which recently enjoyed a very short run on Broadway as a play before closing November 17. Taken together, the new book and the play offered the chance for people to look at how far John Grisham has come.

The New York Times’ Charlie Rubin called Sycamore Row one of Grisham’s finest, “a grand, refreshing book,” and their book reviewer, Janet Maslin, also sounded her indirect approval: “Mr. Grisham does not seem to have revisited his most popular character for the usual writerly reason: desperation.” Nearly every reviewer has rated the book a worthy sequel to A Time to Kill and some have gone as far as to say it’s his best book.

There’s a certain amount of personal history, now industry lore, in what Grisham says. He finished A Time to Kill in 1987, got a $15,000 advance, and it was published by a small press in 1988 with a 5,000-book run. It was not until The Firm was picked up by Doubleday and Paramount Pictures in 1991 that his meteoric rise began. A Time to Kill was re-published after The Firm and The Pelican Brief had become blockbusters.

Grisham has a lot of fans, and a certain section of them remains devoted to A Time to Kill. I asked him why.

 The writing business

“It’s more detailed, it’s richer, it has more layers to it,” Grisham said.

A Time to Kill took him three years to write. Three years of waking up at 5am and having the first word on the page by 5:30am, writing for three hours until the work day started and then enduring court, nearly asleep on his feet. His first draft was 900 pages, a third of which was eventually cut. There were many times when he wanted to give up and he’s never forgotten losing all that work.

“Well a third of it is a year. And I said, ‘I’m never doing that again. I’m not gonna write stuff that gets cut out,’” he said.

But there’s a certain amount of exasperation in his voice when he’s asked to measure the importance of A Time to Kill against his other works.

“I think people also tend to like your early stuff,” he said. “In popular culture if you’re an actor, or if you’re a musician, or a writer or whatever, we tend to like the early stuff. We tend to like the stuff we cut our teeth on.”

Does part of him miss the old life? Is that what Sycamore Row was about?

“Once I started, it brought back so many memories of that life. That life wasn’t bad. We were happy. We were real happy. It’s still pretty vivid, the 10 years I spent practicing law in that small town. And I think over the years it’s been reinforced. It wasn’t hard getting back into Jake. I’ll do it again,” he said.

Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey played Carl Lee Hailey and Jake Brigance in the 1996 film version of A Time to Kill directed by Joel Schumacher. The movie, a huge box office success, boasted a star-studded cast that included Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey, Donald and Kiefer Sutherland, Ashley Judd, Oliver Platt, and Charles S. Dutton. Photo courtesy of Warner Brothers.
Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey played Carl Lee Hailey and Jake Brigance in the 1996 film version of A Time to Kill directed by Joel Schumacher. The movie, a huge box office success, boasted a star-studded cast that included Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey, Donald and Kiefer Sutherland, Ashley Judd, Oliver Platt, and Charles S. Dutton. Photo: Courtesy of Warner Brothers.

Before Sycamore Row, A Time to Kill was the only Grisham book I’d ever read. I liked it very much. It felt like a cross between an ’80s movie, To Kill A Mockingbird, and the town in north Alabama where my father grew up. It also crackles with the meta-fiction of Grisham himself, an ambitious country lawyer trying to pull his young family out of financial struggle while taking on the legacy of racism in the South.

Categories
The Editor's Desk

Editor’s Note: The business of stories

Photo: MARCUS BRANDT EPA Newscom

A perilous predicament: As we worry that our written language is being degraded by fractured modes of digital communication, there has never been a time when more people thought of themselves as writers. Journalism schools and MFA programs are full to the gills; self-publishing tools have made every retired person with a memory an autobiographer; and while kids these days can’t diagram a sentence, they rely on strings of letters lined up end to end to communicate their innermost feelings in real time.

Has the Internet imperiled the English language, doomed journalism to automation, killed the intimacy of personal communication, and cheapened the notion of the professional storyteller? Or are we in the midst of the type of media revolution (printing press, telephone, television) that comes with cultural casualties but results in a great leap forward?

At the end of my interview with John Grisham for this week’s cover story, we briefly discussed the future of the publishing industry, something he says he can talk about for hours. Grisham’s success predated the Internet and his laser focus on navigating the book business—understanding its ins and outs, personalities, and economics—has left him with an incredible vantage point from which to witness its molting process.

Barnes & Noble was the baby-snatching Grendel of the literary world when it emerged on the scene, destroying margins and dooming the mom and pop bookstores. Now Amazon’s digital publishing model is squeezing the lifeblood out of the big box books and mortar economy like a giant anaconda. The age of the paperback writer is over. Done and dusted. Only five major publishing houses remain. There are fewer marquee writers than ever. And yet, everyone dreams of becoming the next Rowling, Brown, or Grisham.

Do you believe in the past or the future? Do humans perfect culture or drift like flotsam along a cycle of growth and decay? Not questions for your local newspaper man to answer, surely. I’ll say a prayer to Charles Dickens, patron saint of ex-reporters, serial story-tellers, and blockbusting bestsellers, and believe there are still big stories swimming in the deep blue seas of our collective imagination.

Categories
News

Curtains for Carmike: Last non-Regal theater in the area to close

Carmike Cinemas, the only remaining area theater not owned by Regal, is set to close this week. Photo: Eli Williams

Another one bites the dust.

By the time the week is out, the number of moviehouses shuttered since the arrival of the Regal 14 at Stonefield will be up to three, as Carmike Cinemas closes its six-screen theater in the Gardens Shopping Center on Route 29. As a result of the closure, Charlottesville will be an all-Regal town.

Robert Rinderman of investor relations firm JCIR, which claims Carmike as a client, said the Charlottesville theater would close November 21. It’s one of about eight the company will have shut down so far this year, he said.

Despite the closures, the company is “in growth mode,” Rinderman said—quarterly earnings are up, and Carmike recently bought nine theaters from rival Muvico for $32 million—“and we’re sorry we’re leaving your market. Management there has done a good job of turning the business around.”

Management is Raymond Kilburn, who took the reins at the theater just over a year ago, when the pending arrival of the Regal IMAX multiplex loomed large on the local movie scene. When the Stonefield theater opened last November, Regal shut down its smaller location in Seminole Square and started screening only indie and arthouse flicks at its Downtown Mall site, putting it in competition with the faltering Vinegar Hill Theatre just down the street.

Faced with an outsized competitor, Kilburn oversaw Carmike’s transformation into a discount theater, ceding the first-run blockbuster market to the big newcomer and settling into selling $1.50 tickets to movies that had already made the rounds. At the time, he told The Hook he was betting on large families, college kids, and seniors unwilling to shell out between $10.50 and $17 for a Regal ticket to help him turn a profit.

And it seemed to be working. Over the summer, Kilburn said he’d given the 21-
year-old theater a makeover—new bathrooms, new seats—and business was brisk.

So why did Carmike pull the plug? Kilburn declined to comment for this story. Carmike’s corporate reps didn’t return calls, and neither did the Richmond lawyer listed as the property’s registered agent. But Rinderman said the theater’s lease was up, and closures often happen then. Apparently, somebody just wasn’t willing to make a deal.

Many predicted Regal would manage to kill the competition once its Stonefield location opened. One person who foretold Carmike’s doom last year was then-Vinegar Hill Theatre owner Adam Greenbaum, who told reporters the multiplex would “shut out” the smaller theater.

Kilburn’s consolation prize for the sting of that prophecy coming true: Carmike outlasted Vinegar Hill, which closed this summer after 37 years, by more than three months.

Categories
Arts

Savion Glover teaches students of tap to look within

Savion Glover is one of a handful of performers keeping tap dance in the pop culture spotlight. Gregory Hines was one of Glover’s early teachers, and he pays homage to him and other tap masters in his performances.

Tap dancer Savion Glover can see the future of his art form. “Where do I see it going? Wherever I am. Tap’s going wherever I am,” he told C-VILLE Weekly in a recent phone interview.

Glover is the modern day face of tap, on a mission to reinvigorate a dance more closely associated with black and white films and vaudevillian acts of yesteryear than with a dreadlocked childhood prodigy from New Jersey.

Perfecting his craft since he was 7 years old, Glover’s dance style simultaneously pays homage to tap’s roots while pushing the form’s contemporary boundaries with an explosive cacophony of rhythm and sound, the limits of which he has yet to see.

“With this performance—as with all of my productions—I try to leave room for as much improvisation as possible. Through improvisation we are able to continue to develop pieces and enjoy ourselves inside of that.”

Glover said he had no real influences when he first started taking the tap classes his mother signed him up for as a kid. But as he developed his own style and studied the greats, like Gregory Hines and Jimmy Slyde, he realized the dance needed to be embraced by modern culture.

“Tap dance was always the butt-end of a joke,” Glover said in an interview with the YouTube channel THNKR.

“That bothers me and that has bothered a lot of serious tap dancers for many years. So until we can erase those stereotypes and continue to educate the viewer, the listener and the presenter, we will always be faced with those obstacles.”

In a way, Glover’s tapping has already affected Charlottesville and its tap dance scene.

Juanita Wilson Duquette, who runs the Wilson School of Dance, took classes in New York City from the burgeoning star in the late 1980s.

Wilson Duquette said she incorporates some of his teaching methods in her classes. Glover would force students to listen and break down the rapidity of his steps for themselves rather than being walked through each individual movement of his tapping feet.

“He would give us a small segment of sound,” Wilson Duquette recalled of Glover’s classes. “And you had to repeat it. You had to figure out what his feet were doing to make those sounds. If you were having trouble, he would break it down slower, but he wouldn’t tell you exactly what he was doing. You had to figure that out for yourself.”

Glover was a patient teacher, she said, but he required every student to give it her best and pour her heart into the dance steps.

Although he’s gained a bit of notoriety over the years—appearing on “Dancing With the Stars” and heading up the Broadway production of Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk—Glover still finds time to teach at the HooFeRzCLuB School for Tap that he founded in Newark, New Jersey, which he describes as his “sanctuary.”

Glover emphasizes that his students should find their own way into the dance so as to discover what makes them feel the most comfortable and natural, while recognizing the history and lineage that made it what it is today.

Wilson Duquette hopes that Glover’s performance at the Paramount, which her school is sponsoring, will help revitalize people’s interest in tap. The Charlottesville area’s tap scene has waxed and waned, she said, but has grown more and more slim in recent years, although it tends to experience a major influx after big performances, like the 1989 feature film Tap, which Glover starred in.

Glover’s latest endeavor, STePz, was lauded by The New York Times as “playful” and “physically reckless, thrillingly so, with no loss of precision.”

In the ensemble, Glover taps his way through a recorded soundtrack that paints the wide expanse of movement, ranging from Miles Davis and Charlie Parker to Prince and the Mission Impossible theme song.

The piece opened at The Joyce Theater in New York City over the summer and has received glowing reviews as he takes it around the country and eventually to England.

Glover says he works best by both allowing a number to develop organically on the dance floor, and by bringing ideas back to his pieces that hit him while he’s not wearing his tap shoes.

“Sometimes I choreograph things once we’ve got all of the players or dancers in the room,” he said from his studio in New Jersey. “Sometimes there are thoughts that I’ve been thinking about, pictures that I’ve been seeing that I’d like to bring to life. It’s a combination of both.”

If the future of tap is going where Glover is going, then it begs the question, where is he headed?

“I don’t know. I don’t know man,” he said with a chuckle. “Hopefully I can continue to grow as a dancer and continue to allow people to understand, or appreciate better, the contributions of some of our greatest entertainers thus far.”

And it just so happens the 39-year-old tap phenomenon is coming to Charlottesville on November 20 to showcase STePz at the Paramount.

“Everything’s in motion, I’m just looking forward to being down there and enjoying the energy,” he said.

Categories
News

UPDATE: Deeds in good condition; autopsy confirms son shot himself

State Senator Creigh Deeds. Photo: Kelly Kollar.

We’ll be updating this story as more information about the attack on State Senator Creigh Deeds and his son’s apparent suicide becomes available.

8am 11/21/13 UPDATE:

Creigh Deeds is now in good condition at UVA hospital, according to state police.

An autopsy performed Wednesday morning by the Roanoke medical examiner confirmed that Deeds’ son Gus, who police believe stabbed his father multiple times in the head and torso outside their Bath County home Tuesday morning, died from a self-inflicted rifle wound.

Despite initial reports that Gus Deeds was released from protective custody after an emergency psychiatric exam Monday because of a lack of psychiatric beds in the area, The Daily Progress reported yesterday that three hospitals within a two-hour drive of bath—Rockingham Memorial Hospital, Western State Hospital in Staunton, and UVA Medical Center here in Charlottesville—all had room, and never received a call from Rockbridge Area Community Services, where Gus was being held. Since that report, Governor Bob McDonnell has called for investigation into Gus’ release.

The reports of a lack of psych beds on Monday were attributed to Dennis Cropper, executive director of Rockbridge. He has since refused to comment directly on the case, saying he can’t talk about specifics. But he said that in Virginia, mental health professionals have just four hours to evaluate patients taken into custody under an emergency custody order, get permission to hold them, and find a hospital to take them. Under certain circumstances, they can get a two-hour extension—and reports indicate that’s what happened in the case of Gus Deeds.

When asked to explain typical procedure in finding a hospital to take a patient, and why calls were not made Rockingham, UVA, or Western State, Cropper declined to comment beyond the following: “It is standard protocol for Emergency Services staff to call a number of private hospitals prior to contacting Western State hospital.”

10am 11/20/13 UPDATE:

State police say there will be no further press conferences today to update the public on their investigation into the attack on State Senator Creigh Deeds, but promised updates later today. The Roanoke medical examiner’s office will conduct an autopsy this morning on Deeds’ son Gus, who is believed to have stabbed his father before shooting and killing himself yesterday morning.

The elder Deeds was flown to UVA Medical Center in critical condition with multiple stab wounds to the head and torso. Police believe his 24-year-old son, Gus, stabbed him and then shot himself in the home. Gus died at the scene before he could be transported.

Deeds’ condition was upgraded to fair yesterday afternoon, but state police spokeswoman Corinne Geller told press in an e-mail that “there’s just not enough new information” to warrant a briefing today. An update from police is expected mid-afternoon.

4pm 11/19/13 UPDATE:

Senator Creigh Deeds’ condition has been updated to fair, officials said this afternoon. At a press conference, Virginia State Police said they’re treating the incident as an attempted murder and suicide.

The following is an updated press release from state police about the incident:

Virginia State Police and Bath County Sheriff’s Office remain on-scene investigating an assault at State Senator Creigh Deeds’ residence Tuesday morning (Nov. 19, 2013). At 7:25 a.m. Tuesday, troopers responded to a 911 call for a residence on Vineyard Drive in the Millboro community of Bath County.

After the stabbing, Senator Deeds left the scene on foot and walked down the hill of his residence to Route 42. The injured senator was spotted and picked up by a cousin who was driving along Route 42. The two drove to the cousin’s residence where the 911 call was placed to the sheriff’s office.

Troopers and Bath County deputies arrived to find Senator Deeds, 55, stabbed multiple times about the head and upper torso. Senator Deeds was transported by ambulance to a nearby relative’s farm to a medevac helicopter and was flown to UVA Hospital for treatment of serious injuries.  The senator is still at the hospital at this time.

Senator Deeds’ son, Gus Deeds, 24, Millboro, Va., was found inside the residence suffering from life-threatening injuries associated with a gunshot wound. Despite efforts by troopers and other first responders, he died at the scene.

“Investigators are working now on confirming the motive and actual sequence of events that took place at the residence this morning,” said Corinne Geller, Virginia State Police spokesperson. “There is still a great deal of work to be done. These things take time and we will follow up with more details once we are at that stage.”

The investigation remains ongoing at this time by the Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s Salem Field Office with the assistance of the Bath County Sheriff’s Office.

1:15pm UPDATE:

Senator Creigh Deeds was alert and able to give statements to investigators following the early morning incident in which he suffered severe stab wounds to the head and upper torso, according to Virginia State Police spokesperson Corinne Geller, who spoke at a noon press conference. According to Geller, a 911 call was placed from a home owned by Deeds on Vineyard Drive in the Millboro area of Bath County on Tuesday morning. Bath County Sheriff’s Department received the call and contacted state police at 7:25am, according to Geller, who said emergency personnel were on the scene soon after.

Gus Deeds was found inside the house suffering from a gunshot wound, said Geller, who declined to reveal the senator’s location. Two helicopters were dispatched to take Deeds and his son to UVA hospital, but Gus could not be stabilized for transport and died on the scene.

According to a report on the Richmond Times Dispatch  website, police on the scene said Gus had stabbed his father and soon after shot himself. The T-D reports that Gus had undergone a mental health evaluation at the Rockbridge Area Community Services Board under an emergency custody order on Monday, November 18, the day before his death. Although he could have been held up to 72 hours, there was no psychiatric bed available and he was released.

A second press conference is scheduled for this afternoon at 3pm.

 

 

Original post:

State Senator Creigh Deeds was airlifted to UVA hospital on this morning in critical condition after being stabbed in his home in Bath County, according to state police. His 24-year-old son, Gus, is dead of a gunshot wound, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported hours after the 7:45am incident. The investigation into the incident is ongoing. Virginia State Police are holding a holding a noon press conference in Charlottesville, where they are expected to release further information.

The 55-year-old legislator has represented Bath County since 2001. He ran for attorney general in 2005 and for governor in 2009, losing both times to Bob McDonnell. Gus was Deeds’ only son. He also has three daughters.

According to the Highland County Reporter, Gus stabbed his father before fatally shooting himself. The Times-Dispatch reported Creigh Deeds managed to leave his house and walk to a rural highway, where a cousin who lives nearby picked him up and drove him to a nearby farm, from which he was airlifted to UVA.

“This is a terrible tragedy,” said House Minority Leader David Toscano in a statement Tuesday morning. “Senator Deeds was very close to his son Gus, and has taken herculean efforts to help him over the years. Our thoughts and prayers are with Creigh and the family at this difficult time.”

This is a developing story. Check c-ville.com for updates as we learn more.

Categories
Living

Overheard on the restaurant scene, Thanksgiving edition

HotCakes is offering a full Thanksgiving menu this year, including seasonal treats like butternut squash gratin. Photo: Elli Williams

Preparing your Thanksgiving meal doesn’t have to be a hassle. Whether you need pointers on roasting a turkey, you’re looking for the perfect pie to grab on the way to the in-laws’, or you’re leaning toward letting a restaurant do the cooking and cleaning this year, we’ve got you covered.

Homemade help 

Feeling ambitious about preparing a home-cooked holiday meal but aren’t sure where to start? Check out Relay Foods’ Facebook page for its “Create a local Thanksgiving” feature, which offers recipes for everything from simple mashed potatoes to cranberry fizz mocktails. The page also includes a pre-made shopping list for each item, which you can order directly through www.relayfoods.com.

For recipes and pointers on how to prepare a picture perfect bird and sides there’s also Whole Foods, which offers a myriad of menus and recipes at www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog. An online calculator will help you figure out exactly how much you’ll need of each dish depending on the number of people you’re hosting, and the blog offers tips on how to dress up store-bought items like ready-made pies and rolls. And if you’re new to this, peruse Turkey 101, a guide on buying, brining, cooking, carving, and serving your bird.

Ditch the dishes 

Choose between a main course of rib roast, turkey breast, pan-roasted salmon, or stuffed acorn squash at Maya this year. For $45 per person (kids’ pricing available), you get a three-course meal and the knowledge that you won’t have to clean up the kitchen. Reservations are required, so contact maya.cville.restaurant@gmail.com or 979-6292.

For a classic Thanksgiving meal of roasted turkey, apricot chestnut stuffing, sweet potato mousse, snow peas, and assorted pies, head to The Bavarian Chef. Both the Madison and Fredericksburg branches are open 11:30am-6pm. Check out the menu at www.thebavarianchef.com/blog.html.

Can’t get enough bird and potatoes? A trip to Ruckersville is worth it for the all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving buffet at Blue Ridge Cafe. For $27.95 (kids’ prices available) you get to load up your plate with turkey, ham, fried oysters, shrimp, beef tips with gravy, vegetables, salads, and a whole slew of desserts including coconut pie, brownies, trifle, and pecan pie. Call 985-3633 for reservations, and check out www.blueridgecafe.com/thanksgiving for a 10 percent off coupon. Doors open at noon.

Treat yourself to take-out 

The Barbeque Exchange in Gordonsville is serving up a five-course to-go meal for $26 a person that includes corn chowder, salad, hickory smoked turkey, sugar-cured ham, four sides, sweet potato biscuits, and two classic types of pie for dessert. Each item is also available a la carte, and a whole turkey or ham is $100. To order, call 540-832-0227 or e-mail events@bbqex.com before 1pm on Sunday, November 24. For a full menu check out www.bbqex.com.

Put your guests in a food coma with freshly prepared desserts like caramel apple cake, apple cranberry pie, and pumpkin cheesecake from HotCakes. Or pick up a variety of starters and sides like curried pumpkin soup, roasted chestnut soup, or pumpkin hummus. See a full menu at www.hotcakes.biz, and call your orders in at 295-6037 by 5pm on Monday, November 25. And don’t forget to swing by on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving for some potato latkes to celebrate Hanukkah.

For something a little different, check out Anderson Carriage Food House for entrees like standing rib roast, beef tenderloin, lamb, duck, or rabbit. The seafood and butchery shop is also offering entire Thanksgiving dinners for as little as $110, complete with turkey or ham and all the fixings like cranberry relish, dressing, macaroni and cheese, and sweet potato casserole.

Bird benefit

The average cost of a Thanksgiving turkey is around $15 this year, and the Young Black Professional Network of Charlottesville is hosting its first “Feed a family” turkey giveaway. On Sunday, November 24, the group will meet at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and provide uncooked turkeys to the first 100 families who register. The event begins at 4pm, and for more information about donating or volunteering, call Wes Bellamy at 327-7873.

Categories
Arts

Nathan Bowles brings his banjo fusion to a dynamic triple bill

Nathan Bowles prefers to play “hyper-nuanced percussive drone or tranced-out solo clawhammer banjo” in his solo sets. Image: Lisa Elmaleh

To the average listener, traditional Appalachian music has little in common with avant-garde drones and improvisational noise. Nathan Bowles has forged a career in each of these genres. The brilliance of his body of work is the suggestion that these styles share a common aesthetic and inform one another.

“They’re both fueled by the same spirit,” Bowles said. “I mean, they’re both idiomatic in their own way. The [Black Twig Pickers] music, the kind of music I like to play, is very spontaneous, and kind of continually improvising within these parameters and themes. It’s so circular and energetic and kinetic. And I like qualities like that in improvised music too, even the dronier stuff. Stuff that seems static to other people, I often find a lot of movement in.”

Bowles was raised in Suffolk, where he played piano and drums as a child. He attended Virginia Tech, where he teaches in the English department. Around 2005, Bowles fell in with a collective of Central Virginia-based musicians loosely centered around the band Pelt.

Pelt began in the early ’90s as a dirgey noise rock band, but soon changed its sound to acoustic instrumentation, incorporating subtle elements of Appalachian folk as well as Indian and Middle Eastern classical music into its dense drones. When virtuoso guitarist Jack Rose left the group to focus on his solo career, and co-founder Patrick Best moved away, Pelt was put on the back-burner while the remaining Virginia-based members focused on various side projects.

Michael Dimmick’s Spiral Joy Band explored many of the same far out Eastern-tinged abstractions, often incorporating a large ensemble of gongs into its music. Mike Gangloff and Isak Howell concentrated on the Black Twig Pickers, a trio who played traditional Appalachian folk tunes and original compositions in the same spirit.

While his interest in experimental music originally brought Bowles into the group’s orbit, he soon fell for traditional music as well, playing washboard with the Twigs and various percussion instruments in the Spiral Joy Band, as well as the occasional collaboration with Rose (who passed away unexpectedly in 2009). When Pelt eventually resumed recording and performing, Bowles became a member of that group as well.

Last year, Bowles struck out on his own as a solo musician, releasing A Bottle, A Buckeye, a record of original banjo tunes, and went on tour to support it. Bowles appeared in town last week, at a house concert in a local living room while on a short stint with Philadelphia-based musician Scott Verrastro. The duo played percussion on dueling drum kits and assorted bells, gongs, and shakers, conjuring up a shifting sea of textures that ranged from gentle tones to energetic freak-outs.

The commitment to sheer sound, and the time spent exploring textures when playing avant-garde music, influences his approach to traditional music, and it’s one reason that the records he’s made stand out from a lot of his contemporaries. “I get so bugged by a lot of recordings of folk music these days, like modern stuff,” he said. “It’s like, fiddles way in your face, and there’s guitar somewhere in the other room. I don’t know why that’s the [popular] thing, but the Twigs are kind of on the warpath to destroy that idea—trying to honor the resonant sounds and the incidents, and just what it sounds like when we’re sitting there playing in a circle.”

While the Twigs usually record in Floyd, Virginia, most of Bowles’ projects have been recorded in upstate New York in a rural studio located in the Black Dirt region, and operated by Jason Meagher of the No Neck Blues Band. “I’ve been really spoiled to record [with him],” Bowles said. “It’s cool because he doesn’t usually work with people recording old time music.”

The solo process challenges Bowles in new ways. “It’s kind of nerve-wracking. When you don’t have someone else to bounce stuff off of, it’s different. But I like it. And I’m looking forward to doing more of it.” He is currently writing songs for a second solo album, which he plans to record in Meagher’s studio early next year. “I want to include some different instrumentation too, like piano and some percussion,” Bowles said.

Bowles has been concentrating on the banjo for the past six years. “If you handed me a standard tuned guitar, I couldn’t play a single chord,” he said. “I don’t know how to play it, so I have to open tune something to be able to do anything with it.”

Bowles has a busy schedule ahead of him. He’s participating in a supergroup of sorts with Meagher and his No Neck bandmate Dave Shuford, as well as like-minded guitarists D. Charles Speer and Steve Gunn, under the name Black Dirt Oak. And he will also briefly join Gunn’s trio to fill in on percussion for a series of tour dates with Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo.

On Friday, November 22, Bowles returns to Charlottesville to play set of original solo banjo tunes that draw from traditions in Appalachian folk, bluegrass, and old-time music at the Tea Bazaar where he will share the bill with guitar virtuoso Daniel Bachman and the solo Davis Salisbury, who plays under the name Dais Queue.

Bachman is a Virginia native who recently relocated to North Carolina, and is a stellar performer. It’s not the first time the two have appeared together—Bachman sat in with the Twigs at the Hopscotch festival in Raleigh this September. “I think we’ll try collaborating with him again, just because we’re friends, and we’re into the idea of exploring,” Bowles said. “We’ll play at least one song together, we’ve just got to decide what, and practice it a couple hours beforehand. But we’ve got a shared repertoire.”

Having played here regularly, Bowles has developed an affection for the town. “I love playing in Charlottesville,” he said. “Daniel asked me to play the show and I live close enough. I love seeing Daniel play and I like playing Tea Bazaar, so ‘why not?’ It’s really as simple as that.”

Check out the two sides of Nathan Bowles’ sound in the video below.


Categories
News

One year after Dashad ‘Sage’ Smith’s disappearance, search continues—for two men

Dashad "Sage" Smith, a 19-year-old from Charlottesville, went missing two days before Thanksgiving last year. Photo: Rashaa Langston

A year after 19-year-old Dashad Laquinn “Sage” Smith vanished, posters bearing his name and image are still plastered around town on telephone poles, community bulletin boards, and at convenience store counters. His anguished family has maintained from the start that he would never walk away from his life and his loved ones voluntarily, and police have conducted searches wherever they’ve had leads: along West Main Street where he was last seen, around UVA, and at a Richmond landfill. But while the search for Smith continues fruitlessly, there is another missing man who could hold the answer to the mystery, if anyone could find him to ask.

A police poster released just prior to the one-year anniversary of Smith’s disappearance on November 20 features pictures of Smith, a 2011 Charlottesville High School grad who was openly gay and frequently dressed as a woman, and puts emphasis on that second man, the only named person of interest in the case, Erik T. McFadden.

“His present whereabouts are unknown,” reads the poster.

Erik McFadden. Photo: Facebook

Erik McFadden

McFadden, a now 22-year-old former high school track runner from Maryland who played soccer at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, according to an online profile, moved to Charlottesville sometime in 2012. He confirmed to police last November that he and Smith, who went by the name Sage, had phone contact the day Smith disappeared, and that the two had planned to meet near the Amtrak station on West Main that evening.

McFadden told police that the meeting never happened. After he spoke with police, but before they could conduct an in-person interview, McFadden stopped responding to calls.

Police weren’t the only ones flummoxed by his departure.

“We were all supposed to go to a meeting, and he didn’t show up,” said J.R. Barton, who worked with McFadden at the Sherwin Williams paint store on 29 North and recalled his former colleague as quiet but a “cool dude.” McFadden didn’t have a car, said Barton, so he would either run to work or ride the bus, sometimes bringing homecooked meals and talking about his plans to take classes in the spring.

Barton said after Smith went missing, McFadden never came to work or contacted his colleagues again.

For Smith’s family, McFadden’s disappearance and investigators’ apparent inability to locate him is frustrating.

“I don’t understand how they can’t pick him up to question him for it,” said Smith’s mother, Latasha Grooms, who lives in Louisa County. Her desperation to find her oldest child has only grown over the past year.

“He has a new brother he’s never even met,” said a tearful Grooms, urging anyone with information about Smith or McFadden to contact police.

Grooms said she believes police are following any leads they can, and mentioned a detective’s recent trip to the Tidewater area to follow up on a reported sighting of McFadden. Charlottesville Police spokesperson Ronnie Roberts confirmed that Tidewater trip, but said McFadden was not located.

“Right now, we’ve done everything we possibly could,” said Roberts, including collaborating with the FBI. But even if they locate McFadden, Roberts said, he’d have to agree to come in for questioning, since police have no evidence that a crime was committed.

“You can’t force someone if you don’t have a criminal case,” he said.

In Charlottesville, a town where it often seems that everyone knows everyone, McFadden is an enigma. Smith’s family members said they had never heard his name, and even Smith’s best friend and roommate, Kash Carson, said she’d seen him but that they’d never met.

Police have said McFadden lived with his girlfriend on 14th Street, but will not comment on how he met Smith.

Nothing has been changed on the publicly visible portion of McFadden’s Facebook page since last November, and one of his Facebook friends who responded to a reporter’s query said she was not aware of his connection to the case nor did she know where he could be found.

With the holidays approaching for a second time without Smith, who turns 21 on December 13, Grooms hopes someone will help bring her son home by offering a tip.

“He is someone’s friend, someone’s grandson, someone’s brother,” said Grooms, her voice breaking. “He’s missed and he’s loved. We want to know what happened, where he is. If anyone knows anything, please says something.”

There is a $10,000 reward for information leading to a conclusion in the case. Anyone with information on Smith or McFadden should contact Detective Ronald Stayments at 970-3280 or Crimestoppers at 977-4000. A vigil for Smith will be held at 5:30pm Wednesday, November 20, at Lee Park.