The Black Lillies are determined to prove you can’t keep a good band down tonight at the Southern. Photo: Publicity photo
In addition to the high-energy performances that have landed The Black Lillies at Bonnaroo, Stagecoach and the Grand Ole Opry, the band recently became known for overcoming artistic obstacles. Two weeks before entering the studio to record its fourth album, Hard to Please, two members gave notice, causing frontman Cruz Contreras to pull together new material quickly.And the theft of the group’s tour van and all its gear in January found them renting equipment to get back on the road. Fans responded by circulating information, offering money, gigs and moral support to the acclaimed Americana act.
Wednesday 2/24. $12-15, 9pm. The Southern Café and Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.
Julius Henry poses for a portrait outside of the volunteer services office in the main wing of the UVA Health Center early Friday morning, February 12, 2016. Henry received cancer treatment later that morning and is speaking out to raise awareness of the Medical Center's policies on disallowing volunteers with a criminal record after being rejected by volunteer services. Photo by Ryan Jones
Julius Henry was first sent to prison when he was 14 years old. After a 30-year reincarceration cycle, including charges ranging from trespassing to possession of drugs with the intent to distribute, Henry was released for the last time in 2006. Ten years later, he owns his own business and wants to give back, but his recent volunteering efforts have been rebuffed.
In January, Henry applied to volunteer at UVA Medical Center’s Escort & Wayfinding program, which directs patients through the hospital who might not know their way around.
When he had not heard back about his application after two weeks, he visited the volunteer coordinator to ask about it and was told he had been rejected. He says it was “a slap in my face as an ex-offender.”
He wanted to find out why UVA would not accept him and asked for a list of UVA’s qualifications for volunteers. Instead he received a new application.
“[The application] does not have the information on what kinds of qualifications they expect from their volunteers,” Henry says. “It does say that they ask for a background check. But it does not say that ‘we do not accept ex-offenders.’”
Eric Swensen, spokesperson for UVA Health System, says that on a volunteer application, all convictions found through a criminal background check are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
“We consider: the seriousness and frequency of any offense(s), the length of time since the offense(s), subsequent work history, the nature and responsibilities of the position and the honesty of the applicant in completing the application form,” Swensen writes in an e-mail.
Henry says that during his 10 years out of prison, he has started a home business, J&J Hand Car Wash and Detailing Services, volunteered at The Haven, volunteered with a peer support counseling program, had his voting rights restored and is now a member of Believers & Achievers, an ex-felon support group. The UVA Medical Center is the only volunteer work for which he has been rejected, he says.
“We are not asking you to accept rapists and murderers,” Henry says. “We are asking you to accept nonviolent ex-offenders to come and volunteer for therapeutic reasons.” He says he wants the opportunity to show the world and his family he can “do the right thing” after coming home.
Jim Shea, 77, spent one year in federal prison for refusing to pay taxes during the Vietnam War, and says his felony has followed him his entire life.
He agrees with Henry that there is a general stigma against ex-convicts.
“Imagine finding yourself week after week, year after year, a victim of this undeniable rebuff,” Shea says. “It keeps people on the outskirts of society. It keeps people from feeling like this is their country and their society.”
When ex-convicts such as Henry are denied opportunities, it creates a “kangaroo court” where private citizens “assume the right to continue punishing someone who has already paid their debt through court,” says Shea.
Swensen disagrees, and says that although ex-offender volunteers are not common at the UVA Medical Center, the opportunity to volunteer is still there.
“In the past six months to a year, we’ve probably only had a handful of applications from ex-offenders,” Swensen says, “but there is not a blanket prohibition on accepting them. We do enlist people who have things come up on their background check.”
The UVA Medical Center is not the only organization with strict guidelines for ex-offenders. The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, for instance, says on its website that those who have been found guilty of violent offenses, robbery, drug possession and other charges will not be accepted as volunteers.
Henry says he understands the need for these guidelines when allowing ex-convicts to volunteer, and he wants to open a dialogue between Believers & Achievers and UVA that will help more ex-convicts meet those qualifications.
“We are willing to listen,” Henry says. “We are willing to accept any type of guidelines so that this will be an opportunity not just for one ex-offender, but for all ex-offenders, no matter of race, color or creed. That’s all we’re asking for—an opportunity.”
Two months ago, Robert Davis was getting ready to set up chairs for Bible study when he received some life-altering news: Within hours, he’d be walking out of Coffeewood Correctional Center, a free man for the first time in nearly 13 years.
Davis, 31, stepped out of prison December 21 to face television cameras, probably as surreal an experience as his last night of freedom in February 2003, when he was surrounded by police, slammed to the ground and handcuffed.
He was 18 years old then, a senior at Western Albemarle High and by his own admission, “naive.”
He didn’t know that he didn’t have to talk to police without a lawyer about a horrific double murder that had happened a few days earlier in his Crozet neighborhood. He didn’t know that police can lie to suspects to obtain a confession. And he didn’t know that after hours of a middle-of-the-night interrogation when he just wanted to sleep, if he told the officer what the cop wanted to hear, he wouldn’t be able to straighten things out in the morning.
Davis wasn’t familiar with the term “false confession” in 2003, and he didn’t realize he would become the face of the phenomenon to which juveniles and the exhausted are particularly susceptible. Nor could he have guessed that his story would be the subject of a national television show that aired on “Dateline NBC” February 14.
Robert Davis has learned a lot since 2003.
Murder on Cling Lane
Snow was on the ground the morning of February 19, 2003, when the Crozet Volunteer Fire Department got the call of a blaze in Crozet Crossing, a subdivision of entry-level homes.
At 6047 Cling Ln., once the fire was out, responders discovered a sinister scene: The body of Nola Charles, 41, known as Ann to her family and friends, in a bunk bed upstairs, with her arms duct-taped behind her. It took Albemarle police forensics technician Larry Claytor a while to notice the charred handle of a knife in her back.
Another shock awaited in the smoldering house. In Charles’ bedroom, the body of her 3-year-old son, William Thomas Charles, wasfound under debris. He’d died of carbon monoxide poisoning from smoke inhalation.
Almost immediately, police focused on a couple of neighborhood teens: Rocky Fugett, 19, a senior at Western Albemarle, and his sister Jessica, 15, a freshman. During interrogation, the two started throwing out names of other students to deflect the blame, both later told a reporter. One of those names was Robert Davis.
In a 2011 interview at Sussex II State Prison, Rocky Fugett admitted that he’d picked on Davis, and said he never dreamed Davis would confess to being there the night Charles was killed.
When the innocent confess
Robert Davis’ six-hour, middle-of-the-night police interrogation has become a classic example of making a false confession.
In the world of television crime, wrongful convictions are a hot topic, as evidenced by the radio podcast “Serial” and Netflix’s “Making a Murderer.”
An expert in false confession who appeared in the “Dateline” episode as well as in “Making a Murderer,” Northwestern law school’s Laura Nirider, who is the director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, has been aware of Davis’ case for years, and sent a 64-page report supporting his petition for clemency in 2012. She has called his interrogation “one of the most coercive confessions I’ve seen.”
It was after midnight when Davis was arrested at gunpoint, and almost 2am when the interrogation by Albemarle Police Detective Randy Snead began.
Snead had been the resource officer at Ivy Creek, the special ed school Davis had attended, and Davis says he trusted him.
Davis denied he had anything to do with the Charles murders dozens of times, according to the video of his six-hour interview. He offered to take a polygraph to prove he was telling the truth multiple times. And he told police if they were going to arrest him, to go ahead and do it so he could go to sleep.
Police widely use the Reid Technique of interviewing and interrogation, which says if a suspect asks to take a lie detector test, that should be taken as a sign of innocence, according to Nirider. That alone should have been a red flag to investigators, she says, but there were other details that made Davis’ interrogation a textbook case of false confession.
She points out how police fed him the details of the crime. Snead lied and told Davis police had evidence he was at the crime scene. He threatened Davis with the “ultimate punishment,” and said Davis’ mother could go to jail if he didn’t tell the truth. Finally, at nearly 7am, Davis said, “What can I say I did to get me out of this?”
“The young and those with mental limitations are most vulnerable to making false confessions,” says Nirider.
She notes a recent study that shows the sleep-deprived are way more likely to falsely confess to a crime. Exhaustion “absolutely plays a role,” she says. “There is a correlation.”
UVA law professor Brandon Garrett has examined many cases of false confession, and points out the interviews in those cases lasted over three hours. If someone is exhausted, he says, he thinks if he just goes along with the interrogation, he can clear it up later.
Today, Davis says the overriding emotion during that interview was fear. “I was scared shitless,” he says.
With Davis’ confession and the testimony of the Fugetts putting him at the crime scene, his attorney, Steve Rosenfield, says it was a “grave risk” to go to trial. He feared a jury would ask the question most people ask—why would you confess to a crime you didn’t commit?—and give Davis a life sentence.
When the commonwealth offered a deal, Rosenfield advised Davis to enter an Alford plea, in which he maintains his innocence but acknowledges the prosecution has enough evidence to convict him, and take a 23-year prison sentence.
Davis says it’s hard to recall a lot about entering that plea because he was on medication for anxiety and depression. Mainly, he thought, “At least I get to go home eventually.”
“I told Robert one day the Fugett kids might tell the truth,” says Rosenfield. “It took a long time—with Jessica especially.” She recanted her allegations about Davis in 2012.
Two years after Davis was convicted in 2004, Rosenfield received a letter from Rocky Fugett that said he had some information that would be helpful to Davis. Fugett signed an affidavit saying Davis had nothing to do with the slayings, and in 2012, Rosenfield sent a petition for clemency to then-governor Bob McDonnell.
There it lingered until McDonnell’s last day in office, when he denied the petition. According to Rosenfield, McDonnell’s administration conducted no investigation of the petition’s claims.
That was a particularly bleak time for Davis. “It was crushing having to wait so long and even more crushing when Bob McDonnell denied it without doing any investigation,” he says.
The importance of a good lawyer
Attorney Steve Rosenfield, right, has moved beyond a professional relationship into friendship with his client of the past 13 years, Robert Davis. Davis cooks dinner with Rosenfield and his wife Kate, top center, in their Afton home. Photo: Ryan Jones
When Davis walked out of Coffeewood the day Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a conditional pardon, he pointed to Rosenfield and said, “If it weren’t for that man there fighting for me, I wouldn’t be out right now.”
He’s probably right. Rosenfield submitted six volumes of documents supporting the clemency petition. “There wouldn’t be a realistic mechanism if a prisoner tried to do that,” he says.
Rosenfield was Davis’ court-appointed lawyer in 2003, but since Davis took the Alford plea in 2004, he’s been Davis’ pro bono lawyer. He estimates he’s spent between 1,500 and 2,000 hours working on the case, legal expertise worth about $600,000. And that doesn’t include the couple of thousand dollars he’s spent out of pocket.
“I’m glad he’s out,” says the attorney. “It’s a lot less work.”
Over the years, his professional relationship with Davis has blended into a friendship, says Rosenfield, and now the two talk every day.
Thirteen years ago, Rosenfield says he described Davis as “chronologically 18 years old, emotionally 14 years old. Today he’s very mature. Obviously he’s a grown man.”
In the two months since Davis has been out of prison, where he has spent his entire adult life, Rosenfield says, “He’s starting to feel a little more relaxed and confident. That’s in stark contrast to the first days when he was anxious, jittery and worried.”
Says Rosenfield, “People ought to know how difficult it is when you walk out that door with no job, no money, no clothes and no driver’s license.” He gave Davis a 2004 Toyota Corolla.
Davis’ parole officer is more like a social worker, helping him get set up in his new life, according to Rosenfield. She took him to the Department of Motor Vehicles for an emergency ID before he got his driver’s license, to Social Services for emergency food stamps, to The Haven and to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. She helped him navigate how to get medical services.
An anonymous donor paid for two months rent on his apartment, and a lot of his clothes have been gifts or come from Goodwill. Friends and family have helped him furnish his tiny apartment in Charlottesville. Rosenfield gave him a large print of swans on a lake.
“Most lawyers go their entire career without having a case like this,” Rosenfield says. “It’s really fulfilling as a lawyer to navigate the system for a favorable result.”
As part of Davis’ conditional pardon, he’s on parole for three years and has to wear an ankle bracelet with GPS. He has an 11pm curfew and has to get permission to travel to his mother’s residence in Crimora. Rosenfield says the conditions are nothing exceptional, and notes that no governor has given a full pardon in a case in which the defendant pleaded guilty and made a false confession since Gerald Baliles was in office in 1989.
Davis joins a dauntingly exclusive club of Virginians who have received pardons for convictions based on false confessions.
“In the past people who have falsely confessed in Virginia, even in DNA cases, faced great difficulties obtaining clemency,” says UVA law’s Garrett. “It took Earl Washington almost a decade after DNA testing cleared him to finally obtain full clemency.”
“Ultimately we’ll ask the governor to convert the conditional pardon to an absolute pardon,” says Rosenfield. An absolute pardon would completely expunge the conviction from Davis’ criminal record.
Back in the community
Davis’ mother, Sandy Seal, is glad to have her boy out of prison. Photo: Ryan Jones
Rosenfield says he’s been amazed by the support Davis has received. “The community has been outstanding,” he says.
Shortly after he was released, Davis was on the Downtown Mall and saw a woman reading a C-VILLE Weekly article about him. She stood up and welcomed him back. A street musician recognized him and started playing “Folsom Prison Blues,” laughs Davis.
“I’ve gotten lots of love from strangers,” he says. “People I don’t even know are coming up and hugging me, and saying it’s great I’m home.”
His brother, musician Lester Seal, organized the February 20 “Welcome home” fundraiser for Davis with local musicians such as John D’earth and Travis Elliott on the bill.
“It’s surreal,” says Davis. “Mostly everyone has been glad to see me. I’ve only had one negative reaction.”
As much as Davis is feeling the love, there are those who are not convinced of his innocence. Former Albemarle commonwealth’s attorney Jim Camblos, who prosecuted Davis and the Fugetts, is one of them.
McAuliffe’s pardon is “purely political,” says Camblos. When Republican McDonnell’s administration changed with a “very liberal” governor and attorney general, “it went through,” he says.
With Davis’ confession and the statements from the Fugetts, “It was clear to us all three were involved,” says Camblos. And he’s suspicious of the Fugetts’ recanting their original statements naming Davis. “They were given every opportunity to tell who was and wasn’t involved. All three were consistent in who was there and who wasn’t. These people didn’t have time to get together and make up a story.”
Camblos also defends the investigators involved in the case. (Snead, who no longer works for Albemarle police, did not respond to a Facebook message from C-VILLE.) “I’ve heard from a number of people who are disgusted by the whole thing,” says Camblos.
Davis, says Camblos, “is guilty. He should be in prison but he’s not.”
Adds the former prosecutor, “I hope he does well with the rest of his life.”
The rest of his life
Brothers Lester Seal and Robert Davis at Fellini’s, top right, where Seal frequently performs. Photo: Ryan Jones
Even a month after his release, Davis says, “I can’t stop smiling.”
He’s remarkably positive after spending nearly 13 years of his life in prison for a crime he says he didn’t commit. “You can’t be bitter about stuff like that,” he says. “Being bitter leads to health problems.”
The time incarcerated did have its effects. “I do have trust issues with authority figures,” he says. “I get weirded out when I see cops behind me. And I dislike the way the interrogation happened. I haven’t watched it. I don’t want to relive it.”
During his time in prison, Davis earned his high school diploma and a certification in desktop publishing. He had a couple of jobs, including working on the prison paint crew and as a kitchen stockroom worker.
He started reading a lot—psychology, poetry, fantasy, crime. “I’m all over the place,” he says. That habit has continued, and recently he was reading one of John Ringo’s Paladin of Shadows books.
Another habit left from prison is frequent handwashing. “A lot of guys there were dirty,” explains Davis. “They didn’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom.”
With help from family and friends, he has several job possibilities, and currently is working part time at a nearby deli.
His mother says that Nola Charles and her son were not the only victims in the 2003 crime. “It’s made my family a victim too,” says Sandy Seal. “I’m a victim because I didn’t have my son for 13 years. Lester grew up without his brother. Robert is a victim because he lost his freedom for something he didn’t do.”
Seal says her health was impacted by Davis’ imprisonment, and that she lost her job when he was accused of the horrific crime.
“People read the story about Robert without understanding the impact on his brother, his mother and other people who care about him,” says Rosenfield.
His mother doesn’t understand why Davis is on parole, has to wear an ankle bracelet and has to get permission to come see her. “They proved he was innocent and they still treat him like he’s guilty,” she says. “That hurts.”
Davis, however, seems less perturbed, and is glad to be in his own one-bedroom apartment, to be able to walk on the Downtown Mall and have coffee at Mudhouse. He can take a shower when he wants, or “walk around without shower shoes or go barefoot,” he says. “I can step outside without asking permission. It’s the simple things in life you find you miss the most.”
Another pleasure of being on the outside: “Being able to listen to an uncensored CD is awesome,” he says. He also enjoys being able to see live music—although his 11pm curfew means he can’t stay until the end if he wants to see his brother perform.
The world has changed since Davis was last a free man. “Everybody walks around like this,” he says, bending his head and mimicking texting on a cellphone. “Nobody talks.”
Davis admits it feels a “little different” to be on national TV just weeks after being in prison. Watching the “Dateline” episode “got a little emotional at times” he says, “but I knew it was going to be a happy ending.”
It was emotional for Nirider to watch as well, especially after Davis was out of prison and hugged his mother. “It brought me to tears,” she says.
The “Dateline” episode will bring more attention to and awareness about those who make false confessions, she says. “The trauma of the interview sticks with them for years, while the real perpetrator is out there walking around.”
Says Nirider, “In a convoluted way, Robert was quite lucky because his interview was captured on video, which is something not required in Virginia. The importance of having that record cannot be understated.”
Albemarle’s newly elected commonwealth’s attorney, Robert Tracci, is aware of Garrett’s work that showed of the first 250 convictions exonerated by DNA evidence, 40 involved a false confession.
Tracci says that while interrogation techniques have evolved considerably in recent years, it’s “both necessary and appropriate” to reconsider practices that have produced false confessions.
Garrett finds it troubling few agencies have policies that explain how to avoid contaminating confessions or coercing false confessions. “We urgently need sound model policies for agencies because otherwise we will continue to see false confessions and tragic exonerations in Virginia,” he says.
Although he’s become the poster boy for false confession, Davis is more focused on looking ahead—and for a full-time job. He’s got rent to pay.
He used to love to cook—and weighed about 350 pounds before he went to prison—and says he recently made spaghetti. Although he weighs about 100 pounds fewer than he did pre-prison, Davis says he’s joined a gym because he’s gained some weight since he got out.
“I’ve noticed everything I took for granted, even simple stuff like driving down the road,” he says.
Davis’ goals are modest: “Being an average citizen, living an enjoyable life of freedom,” he says. “I just want to thrive.”
And what he wants people to know about his experience? “I want them to know that I’m innocent,” he says. “That’s why I’m home. Justice did its thing even though it was slow.”
Jack Fisk is nominated for an Academy Award in production design for his work on The Revenant. The Oscars will be announced on February 28. Photo: Publicity image
The list of the most accomplished art directors working on Hollywood films is not exactly full of household names.
Around Charlottesville, though, Jack Fisk gets more name recognition than most because of his marriage to Oscar-winning actress Sissy Spacek. Once you start to notice and gauge his work—the simplicity, the clarity and the heightened but un-showy realism of it—you understand why he’s been nominated twice for an Academy Award. In 2008, he was nominated for the design of the Paul Thomas Anderson oil-boom psychodrama There Will Be Blood, and this year for his work on the harrowingly primal frontier revenge saga, The Revenant.
Known around Hollywood as a hands-on art director, Fisk is not a make-a-sketch-and-shop-for-swatches-and-direct-your-crew kind of guy. Instead, he’s a builder, and a collaborator, and a problem-solver on location.
It was one of the first things Spacek noticed about him when she met him on the set of Terrence Malick’s Badlands in 1972. She wrote about it in her 2012 memoir: “I knew he was supposed to be art director, but at first he looked to be pretty far down on the food chain, because he was doing all the work. He was always walking back and forth hauling wood and props and furniture and hammering and painting things, while his assistant art director was sitting in the shade smoking cigarettes.”
“I’m not sure that every production designer works that way,” says Fisk.
Fisk migrated to Hollywood when his lifelong friend and art school pal, David Lynch, made the move from studio art to filmmaking, and before long he was dabbling in film production himself.
When he was given his first assignment as art director, he asked a friend, “What does an art director do?” But the friend didn’t know either. That left a little room for interpretation.
“So I got this job,” says Fisk. “I didn’t really know where my responsibilities ended, so I did everything just to cover myself. I got involved in the props, the wardrobe, the set dressing…and it really helped. And I’ve been doing that since then—just doing everything I can for the film.”
The defining relationship of Fisk’s professional life is his career-long collaboration with art cinema giant Malick. Fisk has served as art director on almost all of the director’s films to date. Malick’s achievement in movies such as Days of Heaven and The Tree of Life (both of which won awards at the Cannes Film Festival) has everything to do with the visual aesthetic that he and Fisk and their cinematographers developed.
Fisk turns into an art student again when he talks about that visual style: “I took some guidance from the painter Edward Hopper,” he says. “He could tell a story with just a few objects. You’d see a woman in an office, and there’d be a file cabinet and a desk and that told you the whole story. Terrence Malick and I often talk about, in searching for locations, you look for monocultures. You know, if you’re looking out across a yard or field or something, you look for simplicity in it.”
The iconic image from Days of Heaven, the ornate Victorian mansion standing in an expansive field of grain, is a perfect example of what he’s talking about. Fisk and his crew built that house from scratch in the middle of an Alberta wheat field. It was built as a fully realized environment, complete with decorated rooms where the interior scenes could be filmed, as Malick wanted, with the wheat fields rolling away just outside the windows. “I like building worlds that are complete,” Fisk says.
That total approach to constructing sets on location is something he’s been called on to do repeatedly. In Badlands he built the treehouse encampment where Spacek and Martin Sheen hide out while on the lam. For Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will be Blood he designed and built the skeletal derrick and rough-hewn , raw-wood structures of church and offices in a 1915 oil boom town. And The Revenant, whose location sets included a rustic frontier fort and a functioning 19th-century keelboat, was no exception. Given the raw natural environment of many of the scenes in the film, what does an art director find to do when shooting in the landscape?
“If you’re a holistic designer you find so much to do that you’re exhausted each day,” says Fisk. “We had to create a world. Somebody has to put these visual storytelling elements together. You find them, you choose them and you alter them to work for your story. Sometimes that’s simplifying the background, sometimes its building objects on the background.”
Because of his reputation as a builder of real houses and boats on location, it was striking to hear Fisk talk about how much traditional filmmaking illusion he used in designing The Revenant.
The mountain of buffalo skulls that Leonardo DiCaprio’s character encounters in a flashback is a series of foam rubber casts built on a wood and wire scaffolding that was erected in a few hours the day before shooting. The ruined church in the wilderness was constructed out of large foam blocks painted with religious frescos, which had to be secured invisibly on site against the winds that threatened to knock them over.Even seemingly natural elements, like the cave where the trappers stash their furs, had to be constructed.
“On that location, cantilevered off the cliff, I built a cave using these big rocks carved out of foam and given a cement coat and painted,” says Fisk. “For me, it’s real exciting when you put something into a natural environment and it doesn’t look like you put it there. I would say, in order to really succeed at what I do, no one should be aware of it.”
The stealth designer, whose work should be essential to the storytelling but also go unnoticed, is getting a lot of notice in the run-up to the Academy Awards ceremony. As to how the experience of being a nominee on Oscar night would be for Fisk, he points out that he’s only had one prior experience to go on. “I guess secretly when I’m sitting there I’m thinking, well, if I don’t get called up that will be much better,” he says with a self-deprecating laugh.
Cesar Perez, a sous chef at The Whiskey Jar, is teaming up with restaurant owner Will Richey to open The Bebedero in the former Glass Haus Kitchen space, with a focus on southern Mexican cuisine. Photo: Tom McGovern
Will Richey has something new up his sleeve. The owner of The Whiskey Jar, The Pie Chest, The Alley Light and Revolutionary Soup recently announced his plans to open The Bebedero, a Mexican restaurant in collaboration with The Whiskey Jar sous chef Cesar Perez and his girlfriend, Yuliana Perez Vasquez. Perez and Vasquez will run the kitchen together with the help of Vasquez’s mother and her family recipes from Veracruz, Mexico.
The menu will feature a lot of fish dishes, Richey says, because Veracruz is located in southern Mexico on the Gulf Coast.
“We want the food to be fresh and healthy and light,” Richey says. “We also want the food to be affordable so folks can come several times in a week for our lighter take on Mexican cuisine.”
And what goes better with a heaping plate of Mexican food than a giant margarita? The Whiskey Jar bartender River Hawkins, who happened to have spent last winter bartending in Yelapa, Mexico, is also on board. Hawkins is creating a cocktail menu that will highlight the Mexican classics tequila and mezcal. The Whiskey Jar manager and Culinary Institute of America grad Josh Zanoff has also joined the team as a part owner.
The Bebedero will take over the former Glass Haus Kitchen space, downtown at 313 Second St. SE. Richey hopes to have the place up and running by mid-March. We’ll keep you posted.
New brew
“The first time the beer sees the light of day is going to be when it goes into your glass,” says Bradley Kipp.
Kipp, a UVA Darden School of Business graduate who’s been living in Charlottesville with his family since finishing school in 2009, has teamed up with local long-time homebrewer and UVA hospital perfusionist Kevin McElroy to bring a new selection of craft beer to Preston Avenue. Random Row Brewing Company will let you get up close and personal with your beer, with the brewing equipment right in the middle of the taproom.
“We’re going to create an immersive experience,” Kipp says. “You’re drinking beer while looking at the equipment and actually getting the beer straight from the tanks themselves. It’s going to be amazingly fresh.”
Kipp says construction for the brewery, located in the former Moxie Hair & Body Lounge spot (you know, the metal building with the angled roof), will begin soon. They’re aiming for a late spring or early summer opening.
Critically acclaimed
We love to brag about the food scene here, and it seems the big guys are taking notice. The James Beard Foundation, a national nonprofit that recognizes culinary professionals and bestows what are known as the Academy Awards of the food world, has just named The Alley Light chef Jose De Brito and Peter Chang’s China Grill’s Peter Chang as semifinalists for best chef in the mid-Atlantic.
This isn’t the first time either of the local chefs has received a nod from the foundation. In 2015, The Alley Light was in the running for best new restaurant in the country, and Chang was invited to cook at the James Beard House in 2012 and 2013. Chang, who owns several restaurants on the East Coast, is on this year’s list specifically for his Peter Chang restaurant in Arlington, Virginia.
Other locals who have received accolades from the James Beard Foundation in past years include Parallel 38’s Justin Ross, The Ivy Inn’s Angelo Vangelopoulos, Melissa Close-Hart formerly of Palladio and Diane Flynt of Blue Ridge Cider.
Albemarle County police officer Steve Watson teaches a class on how to prepare for an active shooter. Photo by Ryan Jones
Just days after six people were killed in a weekend shooting rampage in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Albemarle Police Department and the Charlottesville-UVA-Albemarle Office of Emergency Management hosted an active shooter training session to encourage community members to plan for such an incident, though the odds are “one in a million,” presenting officer Steve Watson says.
“Time and time again, you hear people say, ‘I had no idea what to do,’” says Officer Andrew Gluba. “Research has shown that if someone has something to draw from, they’ll react. We’re trying to give them something to draw from.”
Sticking with the motto, “run, hide, fight,” Albemarle police say steps should be taken in that order, with fighting for your life the last alternative. If fighting an active shooter is the only option, Watson suggests turning any feasible object into a weapon to strike or throw at the shooter. “You’re on the front lines,” he says, adding that it’s incredibly important to keep a survival mindset during such an attack.
If hiding from an active shooter, try to lock yourself in a room or barricade a door with heavy objects, and never hide in a room without a door to lock or block, like a bathroom that a shooter could trap you in, or cubicles, which Watson calls “little death traps.” Keep your phone on silent, he suggests, and be as quiet as possible.
During a recent trip to a restaurant, Watson asked his wife to stand and leave the eatery through the exit she would take if an active shooter were to enter and open fire. Though she was annoyed, Watson says it’s a good strategy to practice, and people should always note at least two exits in every building they enter.
When escaping on foot, which is the best option, Watson says, “Don’t crawl. Run.”
“Quick decisions can mean the difference between life and death,” Watson adds. “It’s sad to say we’re living in those times.”
Active shooter incidents usually last about 10 to 15 minutes, according to Watson, and when police initially respond, don’t expect them to tend to the wounded. Emergency responders will follow and they’ll take care of those who have been injured. As police enter the building, don’t scream or make sudden movements, Watson says. Keep your hands empty and where police can see them. Don’t come out of a hiding place until police have identified themselves and said it’s safe to do so.
What’s most important, Watson and Gluba say, is to rehearse for such a situation.
Albemarle police help organizations such as retirement homes and faith-based communities review their emergency action plans, which Gluba says should include training for an active shooter situation. “Unfortunately the times have changed in our society,” he says, referring to the December mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Gluba also says school and airport shootings are becoming more prevalent.
Albemarle County schools are prepared to go into “lockdown mode” in an emergency situation, spokesperson Phil Giaramita says.
Classroom doors now lock from the inside and a protective coating on door windows makes it more difficult to break them. Each exterior door in county schools is now numbered so an emergency responder will know ahead of time which door he should enter to get to the area that needs assistance, according to Giaramita.
In Charlottesville, individual schools form teams to make crisis plans that are specific to their schools. Staff and students also have two lockdown drills each year, according to Jim Henderson, a city associate superintendent.
Juliana Daugherty breaks out with “Easier,” her solo submission to NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest. Watch her video and other local acts at c-ville.com/arts. Photo: Courtesy the artist
A few years ago, Bob Boilen, host of NPR Music’s “All Songs Considered,” turned his work desk into a concert venue. Today, he invites musicians from all over the world to play intimate sets of songs between the desk and bookshelves in the Tiny Desk concert series. The short sessions are filmed and later posted online for music buffs to discover new jams or hear reimagined and often stripped-down versions of favorites. Superstars such as Adele, T-Pain and Natalie Merchant, as well as many others have recorded shows for the series.
Five bands from Charlottesville and Staunton hope they will be next.
They’ve all submitted videos to the 2016 Tiny Desk Contest and if they win, they’ll be asked to perform a set. Fans can vote for their favorite videos, and judges will choose a winner by the first week in March. Each band brings something different to the competition, but they all share the same goal: Get their music into ears across the nation.
Juliana Daugherty’s voice is beautiful. It’s sensuous and haunting; it sends shivers down your spine and echoes in your ears all day. As a vocalist, guitarist and flutist, she’s an integral part of two Charlottesville alt-folk bands, Nettles and The Hill & Wood, but with “Easier,” she strikes out on her own for the first time. The song captures “a special kind of despair that comes of feeling like you’re stuck in a black hole when everything else in your life is going objectively well,” Daugherty says. It’s a simple but abundant performance—Daugherty, her guitar and harmonies from Lowland Hum’s Lauren Goans—of a song that offers a sincere look at melancholy: “I gave it a good fight, / I tried to be alright when I wasn’t. / I took it all in stride, / life’s got to roll the dice sometime, / but it isn’t getting easier.”
“Mouse and Cat” is the latest tune from quirky, genre-defying Staunton band The Judy Chops. Written by vocalist and baritone-banjo-ukulele player Sally Murphy, this song is about love (and its pitfalls) and it will make you bob your head and snap your fingers. Murphy says that it’s a solid introduction to The Judy Chops vibe, with all six members playing music in a tiny sound booth at Blue Sprocket Sound in Harrisonburg. Already, the contest is paying off: They’ve connected with some fellow contestants and are swapping shows for a tour this coming year.
The Findells’ submission is a live take of an energetic rock ‘n’ roar tune that’s caught an early B-52s wave. It’s a song about a guy who’s too timid to cross the room and talk to a girl: “Red hair, black shirt, yellow pants / It’s not hard to imagine romance / With the girl walking backwards.” So he fantasizes about her (and her Plymouth Satellite) instead, says guitarist and vocalist Allan Moye. There’s full percussion, male/female vocals and an electric guitar duel where you’d usually find a solo. Submitting a plugged-in rock song is a bold choice for this Staunton band, and Moye says it’s a “knee-jerk CBGB stylistic response” to the softer, stripped-down format of most Tiny Desk concerts.
For Charlottesville’s Disco Risqué, entering the contest was an opportunity (and a challenge) to create a stripped-down version of one of its catchy, rambunctious funk-rock tunes, “Something for Nothing.” Most of the tracks on the band’s debut run upward of five minutes—these guys love to vamp and keep the groove going—but this one is radio-friendly. “Something for Nothing” is a crowd favorite, says guitar player Charlie Murchie, and it was one the entire band felt comfortable presenting to NPR listeners as their first taste of Disco Risqué. Filmed in a house on Locust Avenue, with drummer Robbey Prescott using a guitar pedal case as a kick drum, this version of a song about a guy who just can’t seem to get it together suggests that volume and a flashy light show has little to do with getting your groove on.
The Anatomy of Frank’s intimate songs are well-suited to acoustic performances and small venues like Tiny Desk. The band garnered some new fans with its 2015 contest submission and hopes to do the same with “Diagonal/North America,” a tune that singer-guitarist Kyle Woolard says is about getting lost in the cold, way up north, and about wanting something out of life that your partner may not. The contest gave Woolard and bandmates Jimmy Bullis (keys) and Max Bollinger (drums and xylophone) the chance to look at their music anew and to “make more sounds with fewer people,” says Woolard (longtime guitarist Erik Larsen recently left the band to pursue new projects). The Tiny Desk movement—where local bands open their music up to a national audience—is a great one to be part of, Woolard adds.
County Executive Tom Foley, who recently announced his resignation, will not be around to see the project through. File photo
“We can’t tax our way out of this,” said Albemarle County Executive Tom Foley—while proposing a 2.5-cent property tax hike in the fiscal year 2017 budget he submitted to the Board of Supervisors February 19. Even worse, he says, that increase barely maintains existing services, and he predicts another will be needed next year.
The culprits for the county’s grim economic outlook: a sluggish housing market and a growing service-demanding population, according to Foley. However, a former supe suggests the problem may lie with the board itself.
Foley’s proposed $375.2 million budget, barely .1 percent more than last year’s, suffers from a lag in the county’s largest source of revenue, property taxes, which make up about 60 percent of Albemarle’s income.
While there has been recovery from the housing bubble crash, county property assessments fell short of projected 2.25 percent increases, rising only 1.84 percent, he says.
The proposed tax hike would put the rate at 84.4 cents per $100 of assessed value. The taxrate has increased 7.7 cents over the past four years to support essential services, according to Foley. “We are struggling to keep up with existing levels of services,” he says.
The budget includes no new positions, expands no existing services and offers no new programs, he says, comparing it to the recession gloom of 2009.
At the same time revenue is stagnant, the county is looking at a significant increase in mandates, he says. The Children’s Services Act eats up $1.7 million, and the county faces increases in its obligations to the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, Jaunt and the Emergency Communications Center.
And while there will be no new hires, existing employees will get a 2 percent raise to keep them at market pay.
Holding the line on expenditures is a consistent theme throughout the budget, which, as Foley notes, makes it difficult to address Board of Supervisors’ and community aspirations.
He proposes a two-year fiscal plan starting in 2018, because the county already is facing a $3 million deficit next year. “The reality is a tax increase is going to be needed in 2018,” he says.
Other options include a $150,000 efficiency study and consolidation of services within the county and with the city.
But those alone will not free up enough resources without eliminating programs and services, he warns.
Former supervisor Ken Boyd sees the problem less in terms of reduced revenues and more a free-spending board, which added services two years ago that are now “skyrocketing,” he says. “That’s what’s driving it,” he says of the revenue dilemma.
He’s not surprised by the proposed real estate tax increase. “The county executive serves at the pleasure of the board, and we’ve got a board determined to spend a lot of taxpayer money,” he says. “They made a lot of decisions outside of the budget process,” such as adding people and capital projects.
“That certainly would be better than increasing the tax rate for those on fixed incomes,” he says. “I would like to have someone stand up and say, ‘Cut expenditures rather than increase taxes.’”
The county’s first public hearing is tonight at 6pm in the County Office Building.
Last year's UVA-Duke game brought "College GameDay" for its first Charlottesville visit.
Photo Matt Riley
For the second straight year, ESPN’s “College GameDay” will head to John Paul Jones Arena for one of the most anticipated basketball matchups in the Atlantic Coast Conference. No. 3 Virginia will take on No. 7 North Carolina February 27 in a battle between the two highest nationally ranked teams in the ACC.
Since 2005, “College GameDay” has filmed at a different school every Saturday for the basketball game of the week, and stars analysts Rece Davis, Jay Williams, Seth Greenberg and Jay Bilas, who discuss upcoming games in college basketball.
This is only the second time that UVA has hosted “College GameDay.” Last January, ESPN was here when No. 2 Virginia lost to No. 4 Duke—UVA’s first loss of the season and only home loss in the past two years.
Although Virginia doesn’t tip off against North Carolina until 6:30 pm, the doors of JPJ will open at 9 am for the pregame show, which is free admission for all. The first 5,000 fans will get a “College GameDay” t-shirt.
Last year’s game day featured hordes of orange-clad students with anti-Duke signs, free t-shirts for those early risers and a half-court shot by UVA student Tyler Lewis.
The show will air twice Saturday on ESPN: at 11 am and just before the 6:30pm tipoff.
Platinum-selling recording artist Thomas Rhett hosts a boot camp at one of Charlottesville's Snap Fitness locations.
Platinum-selling country music singer Thomas Rhett, in collaboration with Snap Fitness, hosted a Charlottesville “boot camp” February 19, just hours before playing the John Paul Jones Arena.
His biggest thrill for being in town, though? “A burger from Riverside.”
Talking fitness, Rhett says exercising became a priority in his life after he graduated from college and hit the road to tour. He has to stay in shape so his vocals don’t sound terrible when he’s jumping and jiving on stage, he says.
When he’s working out, Rhett likes to listen to hip-hop artists like Drake and when asked his favorite exercise, he says, “None of them, actually.” Burpees, a full-body exercise, get him through the days he can’t make it to the gym because he can do them anywhere—even a hotel room on tour, he says.
Rhett kicked off a six-month tour with Snap Fitness in January that will take him to five different cities. He and his trainer host hour-long workout sessions to promote his I Feel Good health initiative with the fitness franchise, which he named after one of his top hits.
Hear Rhett perform as a special guest on Jason Aldean’s We Were Here tour at the John Paul Jones Arena February 19 at 7pm.
