The “Animal Inside Out” exhibit at the Science Museum of Virginia can be shocking for some, but offers a unique look at the bodies of mammals and sea creatures. Courtesy Science Museum of Virginia
We’re lucky to have Richmond. As a mid-size city, it can offer certain things that Charlottesville doesn’t, but it’s small enough that it’s simple to navigate. And when I took my kids there recently, I was surprised—as I often am—at how easy it is to get there.
That’s not even counting I-64, which might be fast but—I’ll go out on a limb here—is also the most boring stretch of interstate in the nation. Instead, I drove most of the way on 250. Up and down we went over rolling hills, with always something new to look at. For me, that’s well worth a few extra minutes of travel.
Our destinations that day were the Science Museum of Virginia and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, though I wasn’t certain we’d make it to both. My girls, ages 7 and 5, voted to start with science, maybe because I’d told them about the Body Worlds exhibit, “Animal Inside Out,” on view there this summer. That was a must-see.
But first, we paused in the museum lobby to take in what turned out to be one of our favorite elements of the day: a 96-foot-long pendulum, suspended from the dome of this former train station, traveling back and forth at a stately speed. The 235-pound weight knocks down a circle of pegs, one by one, as the Earth turns beneath it. Witnessing a peg fall feels like an event, and the girls were suitably impressed.
We glanced over an exhibit on speed, finding much of it to be a bit contrived, and pressed on to “Animal Inside Out.” If you’re not familiar with the idea of plastination, it’s a method of preserving bodies by replacing water and fat with plastics, leaving specimens odorless, durable and amazingly intact. Body Worlds exhibits have toured the world since 1995, sometimes stirring controversy. This one, with its focus on animals, offers many different ways to understand anatomy.
Beginning with sea creatures like squid and scallops, then progressing to mammals, we gaped at bodies and body parts in various forms. There are specimens that show the incredible density of blood vessels in a body; others highlight internal organs, or muscles and bones. Plastinated bodies can be shown with skin and fur still on, or partially or totally removed. They can be sliced thinner than paper or opened up like a book.
If you’re wrinkling your nose, this exhibit may not be for you. The bodies are fascinating and sometimes startling—for me, the first mammal I encountered, a horse with its head in three vertical slices, was a minor shock.
But I found the exhibit enlightening, not disturbing, even where it included human bodies. I think my kids agreed. They used words like “creepy” and “wow” and “the perfect thing to be for Halloween.”
They also zoomed through it about twice as quickly as I would have liked to—fair warning for contemplative adults.
Leaving “Animal Inside Out,” we found ourselves learning about the nest-building behavior of the cutlips minnow. This is characteristic of the SMV: A lot of information comes at you, sometimes without much context. It’s up to you whether to interpret for your kids, or just let it all wash over them. An exhibit called “Boost” was, for us, an exercise in confusion.
But we all liked sitting in a small theater to watch “rat basketball”—a short live program designed to teach the basics of behavioral psychology. The girls also enjoyed seeing a working beehive, turtles in terrariums and—again—that beautiful pendulum, always in motion.
We could have walked, as it turned out, to our other two destinations. Then again, parking was so easy (and free) that it caused no stress to drive. We found lunch in Carytown at the Can Can Brasserie. It’s a French place with a pressed-tin ceiling and great service, and the girls loved their “Eloise” drinks—like a Shirley Temple with a sliced orange.
Although the hour grew late, we made a stop at the VMFA anyway, encouraged to do so by the fact that the museum is free. Stopping by for a short time, then, is entirely reasonable. (Maybe, with kids, it’s even preferable.)
On a friend’s recommendation, we headed straight for the display of Fabergé eggs. I lifted each girl up to let her view the intricate creations, whose fineness I’d never appreciated before. We each chose a favorite, and we were enchanted by videos showing how the eggs ingeniously open and unfold.
As at the science museum, the building itself is half the fun—in this case, a modernist gem with a truly lovely, water-filled courtyard. We decided that next time, we’ll reverse our itinerary, starting at the VMFA and topping off the day with a film at the science museum’s Dome theater. After all, we’ll always have Richmond.
Gina and Mark Thompson want the Brewing Tree Company to be an inviting spot for locals looking for good beer. Photo by Jeffery Gleason.
By Jenny Gardiner and Sashank Sankar
It seems that thinking small is the key for Charlottesville native Mark Thompson and his wife, Gina, who recently opened Brewing Tree Beer Company on the Brew Ridge Trail, in Nelson County.
Thompson, who co-founded Starr Hill Brewery (the second-oldest craft brewery in the state) nearly 20 years ago and has since sold his equity in that business, enjoyed growing that brewery, but has no interest in replicating any such expansion this time around.
“There is no canning, no kegging, no distribution,” he says. “We’re going to keep it very small and very artisanal and very across-the-bar.”
The Thompsons’ plan to keep it personal and local starts with a nod to the property’s former owners, Phil and Linda D’Ambola of D’Ambola’s Italian restaurant. They’ve named a Vienna lager PhilLinda, in honor of the couple.
“We want to be the locals’ home here in Nelson County,” Mark says. “It’s a more intimate experience at Brewing Tree. Even the names of the beers are personal—for instance, Sunshine is named after my father’s nickname for my mom. Chapter Two refers to our marriage.”
And they want to keep the food simple and easy.
“Lots of breweries have snacks like chips, which is fine, but we wanted a different quality of snack level,” he says.
For instance, Gina, a trained chef, is whipping up homemade sweet Bavarian mustard to accompany Bavarian beer pretzels baked by MarieBette Café & Bakery. She also created a few flavorful nut combinations for enjoying with their beers, including maple-bacon peanuts made with local Virginia peanuts and rosemary-garlic mixed nuts with freshly picked rosemary.
They also offer several non-alcoholic beverages, including Gigi’s lemonade, Bubbie’s Brew, a housemade root beer, and Blue Ridge Bucha.
The name Brewing Tree comes from a sports analogy for a “coaching tree,” Gina says.
“Mark has worked with and trained so many people in the craft beer industry. One of Brewing Tree’s missions is to always have a guest tap and a collaboration tap from a brewer Mark has trained or worked with.”
And the Thompsons are interested in collaborating on many levels.
“It’s our intent to give back to the community,” Gina says. “We’re not in this to make a ton of money; we’re just in it because Mark can brew good beer, and to have a place that is warm and family-friendly. We want to get to know everybody who comes in here and we think we’ve done that so far, building a small family.”
For this reason, they’ve implemented a Pints with a Purpose program: With the purchase of each pint, patrons drop a wooden slug into one of four rotating jars denoting a charity. Ten percent of each purchase goes to the charity of a customer’s choice.
The five-acre property includes a cheerful and spacious tasting room as well as ample outdoor space, including a wraparound deck overlooking the Rockfish River, a pebbled area for playing cornhole and other outdoor games, and a fire pit for when cooler weather returns.
The Brewing Tree is open 3-8pm Tuesday-Thursday, 11am-8pm Friday-Saturday and 11am–6pm Sunday.
Eat up!
The biannual C-VILLE Restaurant Week is back, and with it great deals from your favorite eateries around town. From Friday, July 13, to Sunday, July 22, 39 restaurants will offer three-course menus with prices fixed at either $25 or $35. Among those joining the mix for the first time this year are Restoration in Crozet, Farm Bell Kitchen and Renewal, both on West Main Street, and Maru on the Downtown Mall. One dollar from each meal will benefit the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, which helps to combat hunger in central Virginia. For more details on restaurants, menus and reservations, visit c-villerestaurantweek.com (or turn to p. 73). Bon appétit!
Food motivated
Rod Jackson says he started the Charlottesville Dog Barkery in 2012 because “[my wife and I] wanted to feed our dogs healthy and tasty treats, but we just didn’t see any places that accessibly offered that service.” A financial analyst prior to starting the bakery, Jackson says opening the shop was an easy decision: “It just made sense.”
The Barkery, located on Old Lynchburg Road, offers a variety of treats, from ice cream to more typical bones. The most popular item? Pupcakes, which are baked daily.
In addition to selling dog treats, Jackson partners with businesses around town, such as Pampered Pets and, come this fall, UVA.
But the best part of owning a dog bakery for Jackson is the people. “You’d be surprised how many people come from outside Charlottesville,” he says. “I’ve met people from across the world who just want to give their dogs a great treat. It’s much more fulfilling than my previous job.”
Imagine Romeo and Juliet in an urban, 1950s setting. You’re probably thinking of West Side Story—now replace that play’s tragic elements with absurdist comedy the way only John Waters could write it, and you get Cry-Baby: The Musical, a stage adaptation of the Waters rom-com. Featuring the classic star-crossed lovers plot with some subversive twists, this production strives for authenticity as part of the Teen Theater Company—all performers are between the ages of 14 and 20.
Friday, July 13. $16-22, 7:30pm. Live Arts, 123 E. Water St. 977-4177.
City Manager Maurice Jones has a new job in Chapel Hill.
Photo by Eze Amos
City Council announced today that City Manager Maurice Jones has taken a job as town manager for Chapel Hill, North Carolina, ahead of that city making the announcement. Jones will end his tenure here July 31, before his December 7 contract expires.
Council decided not to renew Jones’ contract May 25, and wished him well in his future endeavors.
In a statement, council assures that it will continue to work with the community, employees and stakeholders in the search for a new city manager.
“As we hire a new city manager, we recognize that this is a transformative time for our community,” say councilors.
City Council has hired Springsted-Waters to handle the search, which will take four to six months. That’s the same firm that handled the search for police Chief RaShall Brackney. Council will name an interim city manager July 20.
Press release from City Council
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA – A statement from Charlottesville City Council on the appointment of Maurice Jones to be the next Town Manager of Chapel Hill, N.C.
On May 25th, the Charlottesville City Council made a decision not to renew City Manager Maurice Jones’ contract past its expiration date of December 7, 2018 and issued a commitment to work with the community, our employees, and all of our stakeholders to select a new City Manager for the City of Charlottesville. As of today, an earlier separation date has been agreed to, and we can share that Mr. Jones has accepted the position of Town Manager at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Mr. Jones will conclude his work as our City Manager on Tuesday, July 31, 2018.
Council thanks Mr. Jones for his service to the City of Charlottesville, and we wish him the best in his future endeavors.
As we hire a new City Manager, we recognize that this is a transformative time for our community. We will ensure that the community is updated on a regular basis on the City Manager search, and we will be soliciting your feedback and participation throughout the process. At this time, Council has retained Springsted-Waters to assist us with recruitment. This is the same firm that the City has worked with for several key staff searches, most recently our Chief of Police RaShall Brackney. We expect the search process to last about four to six months. In the meantime, Council is making plans to name an interim City Manager and will make an announcement on Friday, July 20.
We are committed to creating a healthy and responsive organization that will continue the challenging and rewarding work of fostering a safe and equitable environment for all who live here.
Charlottesville City Council
Correction: Headline originally misstated Jones’ new position.
LADAMA performs at Red Wing Roots Festival on July 13. Publicity photo
Hailing from parts of Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and the United States, the Latinas who make up LADAMA are passionate about music and its ability to transform lives across the globe. The four women in the group have had their own lives transformed by music after meeting through OneBeat, a musical exchange program that connects musicians around the world for collaborative projects.
LADAMA is comprised of Lara Klaus (pandeiro, vocals, drums) from Recife, Brazil, Daniela Serna (vocals, tambor alegre) from Bogotá, Colombia, Maria Fernanda Gonzalez (bandola llanera, vocals) from Barquisimeto, Venezuela, and Sara Lucas (vocals, guitar, hand percussion) from New York City.
Linking up through the OneBeat (a partnership between Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation, and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs), “was a life-changing event,” says Lucas, who is also a member of the Brooklyn-based experimental band Callers. “It was so exciting, not only of working in each of our communities and learning how each of our communities celebrates music and expression, but also learning the rhythms, the language and the culture of each place.”
Along the way, Lucas picked up Spanish, allowing her to sing in the language. After forming in 2014, the band released a self-titled album in 2016, with tours across South America and the United States to follow.
The debut consists of songs that are primarily sung in Spanish—the diverse styles of cumbia, maracatu, onda nueva and joropo are mixed with elements of pop, soul and hip-hop to form an eclectic global fusion of South American zest. Songs in English include “Compared to What” and “Atravessadora,” which give those lost in translation a taste of the band’s lyrical craftsmanship.
Lucas explains that “Atravessadora” is Portuguese for middle man. The song was inspired by an unsettling event in which a woman tried to rob her at the end of a tour, and the feelings that transpired afterward, and it mixes sharp shrieking and pan scratching with a variety of drum tones.
“I felt a lot of compassion for this person because I think they were in a situation where they felt compromised,” she says. “People from all over the world find themselves in compromising situations where they are a middle person and they are controlled by other people and have to do compromising things to survive.”
“Compared to What” is a cover of a protest song from the 1960s by Gene McDaniels. Lucas says that the song spoke to the band in a different way than it was intended decades ago. “The song became a universal song for us as all of our governments turned right politically,” she says.
While lyrical content on the album runs deep, tracks take listeners to distinct parts of the world where musical traditions are upheld, and where music and dance go hand in hand. On “Porro Maracatu,” the band studied traditional rhythms from Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Colombian cultures in order to unite them.
All the members of LADAMA have worked in music education with an emphasis on empowering women and youth, and they incorporate educational workshops in their tours. The desired outcome is simple: They want to empower others to create. And while the band has inspired many along the way, one community of youth in Colombia turned the tables.
“The students really inspired us and a lot of our methods mainly through body percussion,” Lucas says. “Now, we recognize that every community around the world has their own way of activating creation in communities.”
The process involves using the body as an instrument and understanding the physicality of music, and LADAMA has integrated it into its music.
“It becomes about internalizing rhythm and song expression by using your body as the first instrument,” she explains. “We explore that through the rhythms that we know and learn from others along the way, and then we show how we use it in our own compositions.”
While objecting to the density of the 140,000- square-foot building, Kate Bennis says affordable housing is “something this neighborhood wanted more of,” adding that Jefferson Place’s four
proposed units is a “minuscule amount.” Staff photo
Seventeen residents of the Little High Street neighborhood filed a suit against City Council July 5, and one of the plaintiffs includes former city councilor Bob Fenwick.
The residents object to how City Council approved a special use permit for Jefferson Place apartments at 1011 E. Jefferson St., and call it a “clear violation” of the process. They contend council “exceeded its authority and granted substantial changes” to the permit, according to the suit.
Gathering at the corner of Jefferson and 10th streets, where Jefferson Medical Building Limited Partnership and Great Eastern Management want to build 126 apartments on the 1.5-acre site that has housed doctors offices, the Little Highers held a press conference to voice their concerns about a “flawed process” and then walked their pro se—lawyer-less—complaint over to the Charlottesville Circuit Court clerk’s office.
The residents say that after the planning commission denied approval of the special use permit for a quadrupled density, four-story building October 11, 2016, the developer made substantial changes to the plans and submitted the application to City Council rather than back to the planning commission.
At the July 5, 2017, City Council meeting, the plaintiffs say they were short-changed their three-minute public comment time when, without advance notice, council reduced statements to two minutes. “This limited our right to petition our government for redress of our grievances,” says Little High Neighborhood Association President Kate Bennis.
Bob Fenwick
At the same time, the developer had added a fifth floor to the project, which council approved 3-2, with Fenwick and Kathy Galvin voting against the special use permit, say the plaintiffs.
While objecting to the density of the 140,000-square- foot building, Bennis says affordable housing is “something this neighborhood wanted more of,” adding that Jefferson Place’s four proposed units is a “minuscule amount.”
Bennis also accuses the developer of adding 12,000 square feet to the plans after City Council okayed the permit.
“That’s not true,” says Great Eastern Management’s David Mitchell. He says he tried to add 2,500 square feet to turn a couple of units into three-bedroom apartments and that “would have added one more affordable housing unit.”
Says Mitchell, “We followed all of the city’s regulations and procedures over a two-year period.”
He doesn’t anticipate the lawsuit will impact the project because the special use permit, which has up to 7,500 square feet of commercial space, and preliminary site plan have been approved, and the final site plan conforms exactly to the preliminary plan, he says.
“If we don’t get it approved, I guess I don’t have a lot of confidence in the city’s process,” says Mitchell.
As for the plaintiffs suing without a lawyer, says Mitchell, “That’s all you need to know.”
Legal expert David Heilberg says a declaratory judgment is not complicated and doesn’t have a lot of discovery. “It’s just asking for a statement of rights,” he says.
He also says that the Virginia State Bar now allows lawyers to offer advice without representing a party, which is less expensive. “That’s new,” says Heilberg.
The plaintiffs are seeking a declaratory judgment that would send the permit back to the planning commission.
“We’re not anti-growth,” says resident Jon Rice. “We are not opposed to affordable housing.”
Mitchell says Jefferson Place has been unfairly painted as luxury housing. “We don’t do high-end stuff,” he says.
“The city needs to decide if it’s going to be a city or a town,” he says, because people are moving here and there isn’t enough housing. “It’s supply and demand.”
Heritage Theatre Festival continues with the classic bunny tale, Harvey, through July 15. Photo: Martyn Kyle
Who, exactly, is Harvey?
Although it’s a central question of this play of the same name, the latest from 2018’s Heritage Theater Festival, perhaps a better one to ask is, Who is Elwood P. Dowd?
According to his sister Veta, Elwood is her “biggest heartache.” He is also jobless, a notorious drunk and best friends with the title character, an enormous, anthropomorphic rabbit only visible to Elwood.
With this is mind, Veta’s attempts to put Elwood in a sanitarium—the driving conflict of the comedy—start to make more sense. Her decision to do so starts a hilarious chain of misunderstandings during which Veta herself is mistaken as crazy and the sanitarium staff starts to question whether this rabbit is as imaginary as he seems.
Through all the confusion, Elwood (Bryan Close) waltzes in and out of the action and consistently steals the show. Viewers whose last experience with the story is the 1950 movie version, in which Jimmy Stewart plays Elwood, will enjoy the unique direction Close takes with the character.
Just as engaging is Julia Brothers’ interpretation of Veta. As Elwood’s high-strung, status-obsessed sister, the multilayered character goes from simpering to ferocious to surprisingly emotional within seconds. Her interactions with Close are some of the play’s most entertaining and provide the core of the story which, despite its distracting side-romances and fantastical elements, raises questions of family and preserving one’s character.
While the siblings’ tension is Harvey’s strongest feature, lesser roles shine too. Payton Moledor is excellent as Myrtle Mae, Veta’s daughter who just wants a normal family. Kevin Minor and Dan Stern work well together as Drs. Sanderson and Chumley, the bumbling heads of the sanitarium whose efforts to commit Elwood become increasingly less effective as they stop worrying about his sanity and begin doubting their own.
If the story, with its themes of mental illness and excessive drinking, seems intense to be treated as a light comedy, it’s important to remember that the entire play centers around a talking rabbit that may or may not exist. The discussion of Elwood’s mental health never goes further than discussing Harvey, and whenever Elwood visits a bar, he’s accompanied by Harvey himself—there’s just something about the image of a man getting trashed alongside a giant bunny that turns a problematic concept into something laughable. It also helps that Close portrays Elwood’s drunkenness adorably, having the character choose his words with care and take acrobatic bows whenever a lady steps onstage.
The other element to consider is the play’s historical context—it was originally written in the 1940s, a time when Elwood’s character, with all its troubling quirks, was maybe easier to accept. Harvey keeps this fact in the back of viewers’ minds with set and costume design, employing Victorian furniture (over top of a beautiful backdrop of sketchy lines—a whimsical style that’s in keeping with the play) and antiquated outfits to make it clear that this story occurs several decades ago.
Harvey doesn’t ask any big questions, but this may be its ultimate strength. In an age where stories often buckle under their own weighty message, this play exists as a reminder that tackling social and political themes, while important, is not the only way to tell an entertaining story.
Take Elwood’s life philosophy as he phrases it to Dr. Chumley. After explaining that his mother told him he could either be a smart person or a pleasant one, Elwood says, “For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.” Harvey is one of the most pleasant, must-see productions of the summer.
Soil from the lynching site of John Henry James joins hundreds of others such testaments to hate at the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Museum in Montgomery.
Photo Eze Amos
Next to nothing is known about John Henry James—not his age, his family nor his occupation. All that is certain is that he died on July 12, 1898, at the hands of a Charlottesville lynch mob.
And that murder is what led to around 100 people from Charlottesville to travel four days to Montgomery, Alabama, to add, on the 120th anniversary of his death, soil from his slaying site to the collection at the Equal Justice Initiative, which opened a memorial to the nation’s lynchings earlier this year.
Several local officials, including City Councilor Kathy Galvin and Albemarle supervisors Diantha McKeel and Ned Gallaway, as well as 5th District Democratic candidate Leslie Cockburn, flew in for the ceremonial delivery of the soil to the Equal Justice Initiative.
But the biggest headliner was EJI founder, public interest attorney and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson, who, it turns out, had a role in the Charlottesville group ultimately being there.
EJI founder and criminal/social justice activist Bryan Stevenson says white supremacy’s justification of slavery is what got us into the situation we’re in today. photo Eze Amos
That stemmed from his visit to the Virginia Festival of the Book in March 2016—three days before then vice-mayor Wes Bellamy called for the removal of statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
After Stevenson spoke to the crowd of pilgrims, Bellamy stood up and said he’d been at that book festival event and had asked Stevenson whether Charlottesville should remove its Confederate monuments.
“If you wouldn’t have said yes, we wouldn’t be here now,” said Bellamy.
Stevenson reminded the pilgrims that what happened in Charlottesville August 12 was part of the country’s legacy of racial bias, starting from its earliest days, which made the new nation founded on notions of equality “comfortable with 200 years of slavery.”
Said Stevenson, “We’ve all been infected and compromised and contaminated by this legacy, this history of racial inequality.”
And changing that narrative of white supremacy got to the heart of the pilgrimage to commemorate a victim of racial terrorism. “You are modeling what that change is about,” said Stevenson.
Within the soil transported to Montgomery are the sweat, blood and tears of those who were forced to exist upon it, said Stevenson. “In the soil there is the possibility of something new we can create.”
Kevin McFadden contemplates the wall of lynching soil at the Equal Justice Initiative offices. Many more jars are at the Legacy Museum. staff photo
The delivery of the soil became the much-belated funeral service for John Henry James, and clergy members who have been part of the pilgrimage carried out a requiem for James. There were tears, sobs and a literal “Kumbaya”—singing moment.
Activist Cynthia Neff and 5th District Democratic candidate Leslie Cockburn flew in for the final leg of the Charlottesville pilgrimage. staff photo
The emotional rollercoaster didn’t stop there. Next up was the EJI’s Legacy Museum, which is on a site that imprisoned enslaved black people before going to market during Montgomery’s human trafficking peak.
For pilgrim Anne Lassere, in a week of hitting every civil rights museum between Charlottesville and Montgomery, the Legacy Museum was the most profound because of “seeing the line so clearly drawn from slavery to mass incarceration.”
She’s also glad it used the word “terrorism” in describing the effects of white supremacy in the subjugation of the black population through lynching and daily Jim Crow humiliations.
Mayor Nikuyah Walker photographs statues at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice that depict the stark brutality of selling human beings. staff photo
And then there was the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, both a commemoration of the more than 4,400 known people lynched and a hall of shame to those places where the murders occurred. More than 800 coffin-like rectangles hang bearing a county and state’s name, as well as that of the lynched.
The memorial site itself evokes Maya Lin’s Vietnam memorial. “It’s just sublime,” said Louis Nelson, UVA vice provost and professor of architectural history. “Its simplicity is its genius.”
Each of the 800 hanging blocks at the Equal Justice initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice represents a county in the U.S. where a lynching was documented. Photo Exe Amos
The day began with a couple of other notable civil rights landmarks: the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial Center and Dexter Street Baptist Church, headquarters for the Montgomery bus boycott and congregation of the 26-year-old Martin Luther King.
“What I like about Southern Poverty Law is that they got the story right,” said Susan Bro, Heather Heyer’s mother, who is on the pilgrimage. “She wasn’t a leader. She wasn’t singled out. She was an ordinary citizen.”
Susan Bro at Southern Poverty Law Center notes the day—July 12—is about the lynching of John Henry James, and wonders about his killers praying before the lynching. Photo Eze Amos
At the historic Baptist church with its magnificent acoustics, music inevitably became part of the visit, starting with 15-year-old Dante Walker, son of the mayor, playing the piano as the Charlottesvillians streamed in.
Church tour director Wanda Howard Battle, before instructing the group to hold hands and sing “We Shall Overcome,” said, “I pray that when you leave this place today, you’ll never be the same.”
And that, undoubtedly, was the theme for #CvillePilgrimage.
Read more in next week’s C-Ville Weekly.
Updated July 15.
Day 4 #CvillePilgrimage: Into the belly of ‘Bombingham’
The violence in the civil rights struggle got worse the further into the Deep South one went. It doesn’t get much worse than at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Sony Prosper and Abby Cox leave the church. Photo Eze Amos
No matter how many civil rights museums one sees, Birmingham and Montgomery always have starring roles as the hearts of segregation darkness. On July 10, the fourth day on the road to commemorate the lynching of John Henry James, the Charlottesville pilgrimage started in Birmingham with that most heart-rending of civil rights landmarks: 16th Street Baptist Church, where a bombing murdered four girls on a Sunday morning in 1963.
“I don’t think anything moved me more than thinking about those four little girls,” said retired pastor and pilgrim David Garth.
The Charlottesville group learned that during the 1950s and ‘60s, Birmingham’s nickname was “Bombingham.” Bombings were quite the terror tool for white supremacists there, and Bethel Baptist Church, led by activist Fred Shuttlesworth, was bombed three times.
“I thought it was one, but it was repeated bombings,” said Garth.
That surprised Myra Anderson, too. “To hear this church got bombed twice and this other church got bombed, I was like, my God,” she said.
For Anderson, 16th Street Baptist was the hardest of all the sites thus far. “Knowing the history of the church and what happened there—it was overwhelming. My heart felt heavy.”
The church is the center of the African American community, said Anderson, making it all the more appalling that hate would invade that sanctity. During a film about 16th Street, she watched the choir continue to sing and the congregation continue to move forward.
“I cried,” she said. “I cried for my mother and for my grandmother. I just sat there and cried.”
At the same time, “I also felt inspired learning about the role young people played.”
Among sites the pilgrimage has visited like Danville and Greensboro, students played key roles in the struggle for civil rights because many adults feared losing their jobs if they protested unjust laws and treatment. Students, who didn’t have mortgages to pay and families to support, were ready to take up the fight.
Armand Bragg was the tour guide at 16th Street Baptist and an activist as a college student. “I was a freshman in college and happy to get out of class,” he joked—more than once. But that wasn’t the only reason.
“”Dr. [Martin Luther] King could make the hair stand up on the back of your neck,” he said.
Birmingham native Dr. Clifton Latting, whom several on the pilgrimage had met during a trip in May to Charlottesville’s sister city in Ghana, agreed that people would “jump in the fire” if King said to do so.
Latting didn’t protest in high school, he said, because he was afraid and thought white people were cruel—and he wanted to go to college. But he understood the anger that fueled others. “I sat in the segregated part of the bus and I had to stand up if a white person wanted a seat,” he said.
“We couldn’t stop to urinate between Birmingham and Montgomery” because the available restrooms were white only. “Students were the driving spirit that changed that.”
Across the street from the church is the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. For Robert Lewis, pastor at Hinton Avenue United Methodist Church, “That one hit me the hardest of any so far.” That it followed the bombed church probably contributed to that, he acknowledged.
If there’s a civil rights museum, there’s likely a Klan robe like this one at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Staff photo
When the exhibit reached the inevitable KKK robe, seeing “such clearly orchestrated brutality on the part of whites, I wanted to go around and apologize to every person of color on the trip,” said Lewis. “It made me angry that the onus of responsibility is passed forward.”
He mentioned Dr. Latting: “His view of white people was that they were brutal, violent people—uncivilized.”
Further commemorating white-perpetrated racial terrorism, across the street from the civil rights institute is Kelly Ingram Park, where Bull Connor sicced dogs and turned fire hoses on protesters. Statues depict those low points in humanity.
Art imitates life in Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park. Photo Eze Amos
In an interview with a CBS42, Tanesha Hudson said she’d always wanted to come to Birmingham.
“We have to continue the fight our ancestors started for us,” she said.
Tanesha Hudson talks to a Birmingham television station. Staff photo
Being in the actual spaces where civil rights struggles took place galvanized those on the pilgrimage, which took an unscheduled detour to Selma to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where peaceful protesters seeking the right to vote were savagely beaten by police on Bloody Sunday—March 7, 1965.
Those on the pilgrimage to Montgomery detoured to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. staff photo
The two-lane roads to Dallas County, which had the lowest percentage of registered black voters in Alabama, made it all-too-easy to imagine civil rights activists being murdered by angry white supremacists.
Driving into Selma, with its many boarded up houses and buildings, Robert King observed from the bus, “So this is what hate did to this town.”.
Walking across the iconic bridge, Rabbi Tom Gutherz reminded, “You’ve got to think of the footsteps.”
A chorus of “Freedom” rang out.
Memorials lined the other side of the bridge. One was to the Tomb of the Unknown Slave, which had sacred objects typical of Western Africa, such as coins, rhythm instruments and cowrie shells, said Jalane Schmidt, a pilgrimage organizer and religious studies professor at UVA. A marker to the multiple victims of lynching had been installed by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, which was the Charlottesville delegation’s ultimate destination.
The pilgrims gathered on a gazebo near the bridge, held hands and were led in prayer by Don Gathers. Some prayed for the sacredness of the place. Another prayer was in “recognition of those upon whose shoulders we stand.’
Tears were dabbed, “Amen” was sung and then, with a chorus of “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” the group got on the bus and headed to Montgomery.
Correction: John Henry James and Fred Shuttlesworth were misidentified in the original story.
Day 3 #CvillePilgrimage: Atlanta and the MLK effect
Miriam DaSilva experiences what it was like to sit-in at a segregated lunch counter. Photo Eze Amos
The cart was difficult, but it was the lunch counter that had many in in tears.
The Charlottesville pilgrimage to the Equal Justice Initiative’s lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, to deliver soil from the site of the mob murder of John Henry James began its third day—July 10—in Atlanta, where it’s all Martin Luther King Jr. all the time. And that means at both the King Center and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, the travelers got to experience his life and legacy—and his assassination and funeral—twice in one day.
Song is a nonviolent protest tactic, and on at least one of the two pilgrimage buses, song has become part of the journey. As the bus loaded up to leave the hotel, Sojourners’ Reverend Susan Minasian, a member of the pilgrimage’s clergy team, led a round of the South African hymn “Siyahamba”—”We are marching in the light of God”—in both English and Zulu.
At the King Center, Atlanta City Councilor Amir Farokhi, who represents the MLK district, welcomed the Charlottesville delegation.
Atlanta City Councilor welcomed the Charlottesville pilgrims at the King Center. Eze Amos
“I would presume it’s as much about healing as it is about empowerment,” he said of the pilgrimage. “We’re inspired by the work you’re doing. Charlottesville is the tip of the spear.”
Coretta Scott King was responsible for the area where the sprawling center is located becoming designated a historic district, thanks to her friend, President Jimmy Carter. It became a national park this year. She also lobbied to have her husband’s birthday become a national holiday.
In the MLK museum was the wooden cart that carried King’s body through Atlanta drawn by mules for his funeral. Vizena Howard had been to the King Center before, but on this trip, “that cart—that bothered me,” she said.
Elsie Pickett said visiting the King site made her think, “We are still trying to find that dream Martin Luther King preached about in 1963.”
The Charlottesville pilgrims lunched in the Sweet Auburn district, where Coretta Scott King founded the Historic District Development Corporation, a nonprofit community development corporation to preserve and revitalize the MLK Historic District without displacing residents.
“So much of the Charlottesville story has affinity with Atlanta,” said pilgrimage organizer and African American Heritage director Andrea Douglas. “We have that historic fabric. We don’t have that recovery.”
Affordable housing is very much in the mind of Charlottesville—and Atlanta, where the historic district’s redevelopment has had the unintended effect of spawning gentrification.
Mayor Nikuyah Walker noted that when urban renewal claimed the historic black community Vinegar Hill in Charlottesville, the property “was stolen” from its owners.
“We can’t take these trips and kumbaya it” without going back to Charlottesville, having conversations and doing the hard work of coming up with an affordable housing solution, she said.
Some were exhausted by the time the buses reached the National Center for Civil and Human Rights around 4pmm, but that visit turned out to be, for many, the most powerful of the six sites the group had visited so far.
An interactive lunch counter lets visitors experience all too uncomfortably what it was like to be an African American sitting in at a segregated diner. Participants put on headphones, closed their eyes and could feel the hot breath of hate in their ears and menacing kicks to the stools on which they sat.
Most of the pilgrims tried it out and a number left the counter in tears.
“This was a little more emotional to sit down at that table,” said Courtney Maupin. “I ended up crying.”
Courtney Maupin and daughter Jakia after experiencing the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. Photo Eze Amos
And the “step-by-step exhibits leading up to the assassination of Dr. King, with him doing his eulogy months before, this one was more intense,” she said.
Her daughter, 13-year-old Jakia Maupin, was more impressed with the K(NO)W Justice K(NO)W Peace exhibit the day before in Charlotte at the Levine Museum of the New South, which assembled photographs of more than 50 people shot by police—with no convictions. “That was my favorite,” she said.
Back on the bus, Dona Wylie, 74, felt “overwhelmed with a sense of grief.” She graduated high school in 1962 and was aware of the civil rights struggles going on at that time. “It made me feel so sad we’re where we are, that things haven’t moved more than they have.”
Some solace was to be found at Sweet Auburn Seafood—besides the killer shrimp and grits and peach cobbler. A DJ had set up as the group readied to leave and an impromptu dance party ensued.
The Reverend Susan Minasian says dancing is a spiritual act. Photo Eze Amos
As civil rights activist Joyce Johnson advised at the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, you’ve always got to have a song you can sing.
Or in this case, a dance.
Rosia Parker boogies on out of Sweet Auburn Seafood. Photo Eze Amos
Day 2 #CvillePilgrimage: First sit-in and Greensboro’s August 12
Joyce and Nelson Johnson’s ‘eerily familiar story” of watching friends and family killed by white supremacists touched pilgrims from Charlottesville. Photo Eze Amos
“Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.” July 9, the second day of traveling for Charlottesvillians on a pilgrimage to Montgomery, began with a song from Joyce Johnson, a native Virginian who was present in Greensboro when the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis shot and killed five activists at a black public housing complex in 1979.
Johnson and her husband, Nelson, founded the Beloved Community Center. They were Communist Workers Party activists at the time of the murders, and after two white juries found the KKKers not guilty, they organized a truth and reconciliation commission.
Beloved’s focus these days is training and healing, said Joyce Johnson, a mission that struck a chord with the August 12-scarred pilgrims from Charlottesville.
The story of the Greensboro murders by white supremacists and lack of police intervention seemed to activist Don Gathers an “eerily familiar story” 39 years later. While Charlottesville became international news, city fathers in Greensboro preferred not to dwell on November 3, 1979, a date that’s as notorious with the Johnsons as August 12 is in Charlottesville.
Don Gathers is embraced by Beloved Center’s Nelson Johnson. Photo Eze Amos
Much like Danville, which the pilgrimage visited the day before and where Bloody Monday occurred in 1963, many on the trip had not heard of the Greensboro KKK murders.
“My two children saw their Auntie Sandy with a bullet between her eyes,” said Nelson Johnson. The story got worse. Johnson was jailed with a bond double that of the accused Klan killers and “demonized,” he said, with police putting out a false narrative that the incident was a shootout.
The only legal satisfaction for the family of one of the victims was a civil suit that found the Klan and Greensboro police liable, the latter for their deliberate absence, said the Johnsons.
The questions from the Charlottesville contingent Joyce Johnson summarized as, “what do you do?” and “how do you do it?” Said Johnson, “I’ve been there.” She recounted being a 17-year-old from Blackwell outside of Richmond and thinking, “We’ll get the country straight in a few years.”
Albemarle Supervisor Norman Dill at Beloved Community Center in Greensboro. Photo Eze Amos
Community is the key to change, she said. Interact with people. “You use all avenues.” And have a song you can sing.
Nelson Johnson once met with a Klan grand dragon who was coming back to Greensboro. “This was an effort to speak to the soul that was there,” he said. “That may not work for everyone.”
And initiatives like the Charlottesville pilgrimage is another path. “What you’re doing today is almost off the radar,” said Johnson.
Many in the pilgrimage were moved by the Nelsons determination in the fight for civil rights over the years. Sitting in the front row, Ashlee Bellamy could see the emotion and the tears in Joyce Johnson’s eyes. “Here in Greensboro, they’re still dealing with that,” said Bellamy.
A few blocks away is the Woolworth’s where four A&T University students staged the first student sit-in at the segregated lunch counter on February 1, 1960, which sparked a wave of resistance around the country. The former five and dime is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum,
The original lunch counter is still there and the building itself is an artifact, one that was nearly torn down to build a parking garage, according to the tour guide LT.
“Segregation is the sequel to the movie called slavery,” said LT, who traced the beginnings of the civil rights movement and then went back to expose the racism, hatred and hypocrisy woven into the original fabric of the country, citing the words of Charlottesville’s own slave-owning progenitor Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Louis Nelson, UVA professor of architectural history and vice provost for academic outreach, has visited the much larger National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, and he said he was impressed with the Greensboro civil rights museum, particularly its depiction of America’s racial terror. Fractured images evoke “the shattered glass of physical violence, and the powerful effect of violence shattering lives and families,” he said.
The decision to exhibit mutilated bodies is one often avoided, he said. “The curators made the decision the season of submitting to delicate sensibilities is over.”
Pilgrimage organizer Jalane Schmidt, who got the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society’s KKK robes out of the closet last summer, studies a Klan hood at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte. Photo Eze Amos
On the road to the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, a gospel sing along began that continued later on as the pilgrimage buses motored to Atlanta.
Updated 7:42am
Updated 9:38am with additional photos
Day 1 #CvillePilgrimage: From Civil War to civil rights
Mayor Nikuyah Walker and Councilor Wes Bellamy pause at the Bloody Monday historical marker in Danville. Eze Amos
Ninety-six Charlottesvillians boarded buses on the anniversary of the July 8 KKK rally a year ago and headed to Loyal White Knights country—but did not stop in Pelham, North Carolina, on the first day of their six-day pilgrimage to deliver soil from the lynching site of John Henry James to the Equal Justice Initiative memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.
Martin Luther King called Danville the worst segregated city he’d seen in the south. It’s where the Confederate cabinet met for the last time before General Robert E. Lee surrendered in 1865. It’s also the site of Bloody Monday, a 1963 civil rights demonstration where 47 protesters were beaten by police.
Confederate president Jefferson Davis stayed in the Italianate mansion that was the home of William Sutherlin. It’s now the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, and Civil War history and civil rights history coexist there—at times uneasily.
“That started out bad and turned out well,” said Charlottesville artist LeVonne Yountz.
A film about slave-owning tobacco magnate Sutherlin produced by the Daughters of the Confederacy did not sit well with some in the Charlottesville contingent, including City Councilor Wes Bellamy, who denounced being subjected to a “culturally incompetent whitewashing” on the anniversary of the Klan rally.
Wes Bellamy objects to learning the history of slaveowner William Sutherlin in his mansion, now the Danville Museum of Fine Art and History. Eze Amos
“You’re being disrespectful,” countered Lorie Strother, who said it was unfair to “come into their house and raise hell.”
Lorie Strother found Bellamy’s outburst “disrespectful.” Eze Amos
The mood calmed after a panel of civil rights activists, who were teenagers in 1963, talked about trying to end segregation with peaceful protests that brought movement leaders, including King, to Danville.
Pastor Thurman Echols was 16 and “one of the first to be arrested.” Police went to his house and arrested his mother and father, he said, which happened when the demonstrators were underage.
Dorothy Batson, Carolyn Wilson and Thurman Echols were teenagers in 1963 when peaceful protests in Danville turned violent. Eze Amos
Carolyn Wilson was 15 years old and described being taught by Andrew Young “how to curl up in a ball so you wouldn’t get as severely hurt when beaten.” And she assured the survivors of August 12 that just because she followed King’s practice of nonviolence didn’t mean she didn’t want to beat someone. “We were spat on and rocks were thrown on us,” she said.
Dorothy Batson was 17 when she was dragged from Belk—but had someone ready to step in to lead the demonstration after her arrest. “Be organized,” she advised.
She went on to organize against the poll tax and to teach people how to read and write so they could register to vote, because literacy tests were another way to disenfranchise black voters.
“That’s what we went through,” she said. “It hurt my heart that you wanted to walk out because you didn’t like what you heard.”
A Charlottesville teen said she could see going back to fighting for civil rights, which drew chuckles from the panelists, one of whom said the battle had never ended.
The museum was the site of a battle over a Confederate flag that flew outside in 2015. The building is owned by Danville and the city council refused to allow its removal—until the Charleston church massacre.
Another traveler asked what was being done about all the Confederate flags that went up when the museum flag came down, including the largest one in the country on U.S. 29 that cost $30,000 and is on private property, according to Martinsville Vice Mayor Chad Martin.
“No industries want to come to Danville,” said Pastor Echols, who suggested not supporting business owners that fly the flag.
The buses were loaded and had left the museum when they pulled into a parking lot so pilgrims could see the Bloody Monday historical marker in downtown Danville.
Earlier in the day, the pilgrimage stopped at Appomattox, where Lee surrendered and where former 5th District congressman Tom Perriello and his nephew joined the group for a bit. Perriello recalled first visiting the national park as a Boy Scout, and said the historical retelling had gotten more accurate over the years.
Tom Perriello talks to Susan Bro, and thanks her for trying to turn the death of her daughter Heather Heyer August 12 into something “powerful and positive.” Eze Amos
Historical interpretation was the topic after leaving Appomattox, where the focus was very much on the military history, with very little on the enslaved people who were there. “I would have liked a little bit more,” said Virginia Humanities’ Kevin McFadden.
And his colleague Justin Reid called it a “missed opportunity” and said Historic Jamestowne is “cutting edge” on the interpretation of African American history while Monticello is incorporating that history throughout the site.
Historical interpretation is likely to remain a theme. Next stop: Greensboro, North Carolina, home of the first lunch counter sit-in.
Correction: The original version should have identified Historic Jamestowne as doing historic interpretation that Justin Reid said was “cutting edge.”
CHS student Zyahna Bryant and Mayor Nikuyah Walker dig up soil from where John Henry James is believed to have died. It will be taken in a pilgrimage to Montgomery to join that of other African Americans who died from lynching around the South.
staff photo
About 50 people gathered in the woods beside the train tracks running west of Charlottesville early July 7. The morning was cool and birds could be heard chirping in the quiet—a scene nothing like the one 120 years ago, when a mob yanked John Henry James off a train there at Wood’s Crossing and strung him up on a locust tree.
“Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world.” The Reverend Brenda Brown-Grooms sang the Mahalia Jackson spiritual as participants contemplated the violence that had taken place on the site.
The occasion was to gather soil from property now owned by Farmington Country Club, the first step of a pilgrimage in which approximately 100 Charlottesville citizens will transport it to the recently opened lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alabama—the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial to Peace and Justice.
“We are embarking on an important journey,” said Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and one of the pilgrimage organizers. “Today we recognize a murder. We, in doing so, are returning humanity to a dehumanizing act.”
The journey is a way to “commemorate, understand and recognize this act and incorporate it into our DNA and bodies as wrong,” said Douglas.
City and county officials were present for the ceremony, including Mayor Nikuyah Walker, Vice Mayor Heather Hill, councilors Wes Bellamy and Kathy Galvin and police Chief RaShall Brackney, as well Albemarle supervisors Diantha McKeel, Ned Gallaway, Norman Dill, Rick Randolph and Chair Ann Mallek.
UVA professor and pilgrimage organizer Jalane Schmidt recounted the details of James’ slaying. He’d been accused of assaulting a white woman, arrested and taken to spend the night in jail in Staunton because of fears of a lynching. On the train ride back, accompanied by the Albemarle sheriff, a group of around 150 unmasked men boarded the train.
After James was hanged, his body was riddled with 75 bullets, according to the Shenandoah Herald. “Hundreds of people visited the scene with many snatching souvenirs, such as pieces of his clothing,” said Schmidt. No arrests were made.
Walker and Charlottesville High student Zyahna Bryant dug up dirt from the site, and Walker asked all the black people there to come closer, to close their eyes and “yell out a name you’d like to share this moment with.”
Said Walker, “There is no explanation for the violence black bodies have endured in this country. There are no amount of sorry that can make up for the amount of turmoil black people and black families have endured in this country.”
She pointed out the volume of the violence inflicted on James with 75 shots into his body. “Somebody’s son, somebody’s brother, maybe somebody’s father.” She said those same injustices and hate happen every day in this country and in Charlottesville.
“We take this journey to gamble on the ancient notion that the truth will set us free,” said the Reverend Susan Minasian, who is one of three clergy going on the pilgrimage.
Schmidt concluded the ceremony by pouring “a libation for the dead”—Virginia distilled whiskey from a flask—onto the ground where James is believed to have perished.
The mood of participants afterward was somber, with some relief.
“It’s rehumanizing,” says April Burns, whose mother, Joan Burton, grew up across the street at Ednam Farm and had played around the “hanging tree.”
“This was for somebody who never had a funeral,” said Burns.
“In my opinion, slavery was this country’s original sin and we can’t get past it,” said Supervisor McKeel. “It’s haunting us to this day.”
Chief Brackney acknowledged being torn between her race and her job as a cop. “I’m saddened my profession is still part of that,” she said. “I’m also feeling hope that we’re standing on rich soil that allows us to plant our findings forward.”
She added, “We start to own and change the narrative.”
“It was very emotional, being able to be in the spot as a black man,” said Bellamy, who has family members who have been lynched. “I was thinking about the mob and what [James’] feelings must have been to feel the train slow down, and the state of shock and fear he must have felt.”
The murderers took 20 minutes for prayer, “making a ritual of hanging and shooting this man,” said Bellamy.
And he thought of two years ago, when he created a firestorm by saying the city’s Confederate statues should come down. “I wonder if [people] knew this story,” he said.
Being at the lynching site couldn’t help but feel very close to home. “I get letters all the time about how they want to hang me on a tree,” said Bellamy. “My daughters—they send letters to my daughters and want to hang them on a tree.”
One thing Bellamy said he’s seen is the “evolution” of white people. “A lot of white people just didn’t understand how painful this was for us.”
He said, “People’s minds are a lot more open from March 2016 until now.”
Following the Farmington ceremony, the heritage center held a community conversation on lynching and screened “An Outrage,” a documentary by Lance Walker and Charlottesville native Hannah Ayers, who didn’t have Charlottesville on her radar when they started work on a film about lynching. Like a lot of people, Ayers was unaware of James’ murder.
But lynching was much more a part of history than “what we’d been taught,” said Walker.
Supervisor Randolph got a standing ovation for his talk on race—”truly America’s disgrace”—and declared July 12, the day of the lynching, John Henry James Day. “Here we repudiate the vile murder of John Henry James.”
Many of the 100 people who will be leaving on the July 8 pilgrimage were present in the historic African American Jefferson School.
Said Douglas, “I believe this is nothing short of monumental. We’re taking hold of history. We’re examining it critically and rewriting the narrative that’s been incomplete.”
The Babe Rainbow doubles down with "equal parts muzzy psychedelia and soft rock and soul." Publicity photo
Chromeo
Head Over Heels (Atlantic)
Montreal’s gift to dancing frat bros returns with a phone book of guests, starting with DRAM, coming off like Biz Markie on “Must’ve Been” (as in “must’ve been high”). French Mon-
tana and Stefflon Don follow up on “Don’t Sleep” and it’s clear Chromeo wants you to WOO PARTY! “Right Back Home to You” nicks the groove from Boz Scaggs’ “Lowdown” and it’s a high point, as is roller-skating jam “Just Friends,” featuring Amber Mark. But there’s way too much dorky grossness, e.g.: “Relationships ain’t a democracy / I’m good if you just stay on top of me,” and Head Over Heels, especially the concluding “Room Service,” hangs around like adrunk legacy making an ass of himself.
Bebe Rexha
Expectations (Warner Bros.)
Bebe Rexha basically proves Theodor Adorno’s grievance that the only difference between popular music genres is marketing. Rexha’s songs, performed by Florida Georgia Line, Eminem and others, have charted R&B/hip-hop, country and of course, just plain pop, and Wikipedia adds K-pop, alternative rock and EDM to Rexha’s professed styles. Ironically, Rexha’s debut full-length doesn’t hop around so much as hop in place; when “Self Control” kicks off with a reggaeton beat, it’s the first marker of anything specific. Rexha projects emotion like a pro, and I’m sure if I heard these songs five times I’d wake up singing them. But nothing makes a real impression besides the cheesy love ballad “Pillow,” which works as a cheesy love ballad.
Dawes
Passwords (HUB)
As many times as Americana royalty Dawes has come to town, it feels inhospitable to call them boring. But maybe they get bored too? ProducerJonathan Wilson drenchesPasswords with the mellow Laurel Canyon vibesof America, Poco and the Eagles, and even throws in a few ‘80s “End of the Innocence” moments. So Dawes’ timbres expand: “Stay Down” is a Tweedyish roots-rocker; “Living in the Future” gets epic; “Feed the Fire” is ersatz Steely Dan, fake sitar solo and all. But Taylor Goldsmith’s anodyne pathos still holds sway, which many folks seem cool with—for me, the songs blossom when he steps aside and the band, especially slide guitarist Trevor Menear, gets to shine.
Bodega
Endless Scroll
(What’s Your Rupture?)
There’s nothing more New York than a bodega—so it’s pretty suitable that this Brooklyn band plays snotty, martial post-punk that’s not just akin to Parquet Courts; it basically grew from a clipping. The Courts’ Austin Brown produced Endless Scroll on the same Tascam as Light Up Gold, and Ben Hozie barks one-note melodies about the mundane and the serious, just like Brown. This gets grating, sad to say, and I wish Nikki Belfiglio’s backing came more to the fore, because she sounds great in the background of tracks like “Can’t Knock the Hustle.” But the band will probably tear it up at Strange Matter in Richmond on July 29.
Australian retro alchemists The Babe Rainbow concoct hazy jams that are equal parts muzzy psychedelia and soft rock and soul, and singer Angus Dowling makes up for a limited range by just sounding mellow as hell. Double Rainbow floats by as smooth as can be— “The Magician” is snaky and sultry; “Supermoon” is stony and drony; “2nd of April” is a startlingly gor-
geous instrumental and “Darby and Joan” trots alongamiably. Throw out the dancy clunker “Eureka” and the glib sitar solo “Alan Chadwick’s Garden,” and you’ve got a real playtime/naptime classic here.
