A full day of horsing around awaits at the 45th running of the Foxfield Races. The historic steeplechase event, born out of the tradition of fox hunting, features seven full race cards over flat tracks, hurdles, hills, and obstacles for the jockeys and their thoroughbreds. Live music, local vendors, and a variety of food trucks combine with derby-style fashions, enthusiastic tailgating, and friendly side wagers at this outdoor affair.
Dave Matthews Band has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the star-studded class of 2024.
Musical acts become eligible for nomination 25 years after the release of their first recording, and are inducted based on voting by more than 1,000 music historians, industry professionals, and current Hall of Fame members. Since 2012, fan voting has been a part of membership consideration, giving the winner of the poll one additional vote toward induction. In its first year of eligibility (2020), DMB was the first and only group to win the popularity poll, but not be inducted into the hall.
Eligibility, nominations, and inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have been the subject of much national attention since its founding in the 1980s. After decades of snubbing Rock and Roll icons, the hall now balances honoring iconic figures years after they became eligible and inducting newer acts.
Joining DMB in the Class of 2024 are Cher, Ozzy Osbourne, Peter Frampton, Mary J. Blige, Kool & The Gang, Foreigner, and A Tribe Called Quest. While this year marks the largest group of inductees ever, several nominees were snubbed, including Sinéad O’Connor, who died last year.
“Dave Matthews Band is honored to be in the @rockhall Class of 2024,” the band said on X/Twitter. “Congrats to our fellow nominees and thanks so much to all of our fans for the support!”
The Class of 2024 will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on October 19 in Cleveland, Ohio.
Mascot mania
Finalist for new middle school mascot. Charlottesville City Schools.
Along with a new name and building, Charlottesville’s only middle school will soon have a new mascot. Voters have until April 30 to tell Charlottesville City Schools their preference from the list of finalists: the Black Knights, “another type of knight”(e.g. Junior Knights, Orange Knights), the Chargers, and the Monarchs.
The final choices were selected through an earlier survey conducted by the school district, with each potential mascot illustrated through stock photos and AI-generated images to give voters a feel for potential logos. CCS emphasizes that the “images shown are only starting points,” and it will work with a designer once a mascot is selected.
Regardless of which mascot comes out on top, the school’s colors and logo will be orange and black to match Charlottesville High School’s colors.
The district has not given a timeline for the selection of the mascot or revealed a final design, but Buford Middle School will formally be renamed Charlottesville Middle School when the new building is officially opened for the 2025-26 school year.
UVA assault
University of Virginia police responded to an assault April 21 on the 1400 block of University Avenue. The incident, which occurred around 2am, left one adult male victim with serious injuries. He was sent to UVA Medical Center. University police transferred the case to the Charlottesville Police Department, and detectives have begun an investigation. Photos of individuals sought by CPD are available at charlottesville.gov/1741/police. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact CPD at 970-3280 or the Crime Stoppers tip line at 977-4000.
Burn out
One of the tiki torch-bearers from August 11, 2017, has pleaded guilty to participating in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Tyler Bradley Dykes, 26, of Bluffton, South Carolina, who was arrested in Charlottesville last year, took a guilty plea on two felony counts regarding his assault on Capitol police officers. According to the plea agreement, Dykes faces a maximum of eight years in prison, plus a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.
Dog’s day
The Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA raised more than $100,000 this year during its 11th annual bow-WOW-walk fundraiser, which was held on April 20 at Boar’s Head Resort. The event featured both a competitive 5K race and a leisurely dog walk. Pet owners could also enter their furry friends into competitions for best trick, best costume, and pet-owner look-alike. According to CBS19, more than 250 people attended the fundraiser, whose proceeds will go to homeless animals and programs at CASPCA.
Charlottesville representatives returned to Richmond for the April meeting of the state legislature. The April 17 session was originally intended to address vetoes, amendments, and the state budget, but a jam-packed agenda pushed budget considerations to May.
Though he didn’t outright veto the budget, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin put forward 233 amendments to the bill, and went on a tour of Virginia to rally opposition to what he called a “broken” spending plan.
Rather than try to address the divide on the budget during the one-day session, the House of Delegates voted unanimously to reject Youngkin’s budget amendments—allowing lawmakers to meet for a special session of the legislature on May 13 and, hopefully, pass the final spending plan by May 15. Legislators have completely scrapped the budget, and are now building a new budget with input from Democratic and Republican leadership.
Lawmakers have until July 1 to pass a budget before Virginia goes into a government shutdown. In the interim, the state budget delay is creating uncertainty for local governments, including Charlottesville’s.
The city’s budget was finalized on April 15, but questions about state funding make planning difficult for local school systems and other organizations slated to receive money from the commonwealth.
“The amount of state funding for local school systems is unknown,” said City Councilor Michael Payne in an email. “We have to wait to see how much additional revenue goes to [the] state increasing teacher salaries, funding ESOL positions, etc.”
According to Councilor Lloyd Snook, the state’s pushback of budget deadlines in recent years has added an additional layer of difficulty to the local budget process, resulting in city lawmakers “working in the dark.”
“Because council did not give the schools as much as they wanted, I was hoping that the budget would include at least another $2 million for the schools,” said Snook in an email. “The budget that is now supposed to be adopted in May might help the schools directly, but who knows at this point?”
Charlottesville will also feel the impact of the April legislative session through the failure of multiple bills introduced by local representatives. The legislature did not overturn any of Youngkin’s vetoes, despite bipartisan and popular support for several bills.
Among the legislation struck down were two bills from state Sen. Creigh Deeds, both of which focused on gun control.
In a bill update shared on social media, Deeds addressed the failure of Senate Bill 383, which was inspired by the fatal on-Grounds shooting of three University of Virginia student-athletes in November 2022.
“Purportedly, it was known that the student on trial for their murders was having trouble and had firearms in his room in a University-owned residence hall,” Deeds wrote. “Even though this violated policy, law enforcement was hamstrung in their ability to respond to this information because this was not a criminal violation. SB 383 was about making sure law enforcement can act on reliable intelligence. If this had been law, the University Police would have been able to obtain a search warrant and remove the firearms.”
Renowned folk singer and former Charlottesville resident John McCutcheon performs at PVCC on Saturday, April 27, at 7:30pm. Supplied photo.
At the intermission of his concerts, John McCutcheon asks attendees to submit song requests for the show’s second set. It’s how the Grammy-nominated folk singer, who’s released 44 albums during his five-decade career, figures out what to play. With a huge catalog of material, McCutcheon says his performances are spontaneously constructed, and singing is just part of the evening. He often introduces songs with lengthy stories, and he makes time to showcase his prowess on more than a dozen traditional acoustic instruments, including banjo, fiddle, and hammer dulcimer.
“It’s an interesting tightrope to walk,” says McCutcheon, 71, of his time on stage. “You want to do your new stuff, but people come because of what they’ve heard before. Being a soloist has forced me to learn how to read an audience. At this point, singing songs is the easy part. What’s fun is crafting a show that comes together as a whole.”
Of the song requests he solicits from his audience, McCutcheon says there are some typical favorites, including “Christmas in the Trenches,” an engaging ballad set in World War I from the 1984 album Winter Solstice, and “Old People in Love,” a sentimental tune from 2009’s Untold.
Another staple, “Kindergarten Wall,” has roots in Charlottesville. McCutcheon wrote the cheery recollection of lessons learned during the first year of school, found on his acclaimed children’s album Mail Myself to You, after one of his kids finished kindergarten at Burnley-Moran Elementary School. McCutcheon lived in town for two decades, from 1986 to 2006, and although that time coincided with a period of heavy national touring, he fondly recalls collaborating with members of the local music scene and fostering community with other singer-songwriters who lived in the area, including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Ellis Paul, and the late Jesse Winchester.
“We were all pals, and it still feels right when I get together with some of these folks,” McCutcheon says. “For me, Charlottesville became a place where you could become engaged in a community and lend a hand in your own peculiar way.”
A standout memory? On New Year’s Eve in 1999, McCutcheon assembled hundreds of musicians, including church choir singers, rock players, and the Charlottesville High School band, for a special performance for First Night Virginia that took place under a big circus tent set up near where the Ting Pavilion is currently located.
“The kind of imagination that can come from a really creative small city like Charlottesville was really exciting and liberating,” he says.
McCutcheon now resides in the Atlanta area, but he keeps Charlottesville in rotation on his regular touring schedule. He’s found a comfortable spot for shows at Piedmont Virginia Community College’s Mainstage Theatre, where he’ll perform on Saturday, April 27.
When McCutcheon returns to town, he’ll bring material from his latest album, last year’s Together, a collaborative collection of songs with fellow longstanding folk artist Tom Paxton—an influential figure in the genre who made his mark alongside Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk in the 1960s Greenwich Village revival scene.
At the onset of the pandemic, McCutcheon and Paxton started meeting for weekly writing sessions via Zoom, and the duo found a groove that yielded 14 songs. Like much of McCutcheon’s discography, the album’s lyrics move between subjects that are topical, humorous, historical, and personal.
Album opener “Ukrainian Now” takes a supportive stance for citizens of an invaded country still in the throes of war. With emotive bow work from ace fiddler Stuart Duncan and a stirring chorus, the song has broadly resonated with listeners, and it even resulted in a Ukrainian family living in Seattle sending McCutcheon a bandura—a traditional Ukrainian string instrument—as a gesture of thanks.
“It went viral, as the youngsters say,” McCutcheon says of the song. “We were getting comments from frontline soldiers in Ukraine. When I decide to write a song [about something], I want to contribute to the conversation in a way that helps people see it in a way they hadn’t thought about it before.”
McCutcheon already has album number 45 in the works, and he says it will include backing from Charlottesville drummer Robert Jospé and a song written with Trent Wagler of The Steel Wheels. Although he’s glad to be back on the road, McCutcheon says he’s continued to embrace remote co-writing, with fruitful results.
“It’s kept the creative juices going,” he says. “I’m still doing it regularly and coming up with a lot more songs.”
Charges against Patrick McNamara were dropped on April 11. Supplied photo.
After almost three months, Charlottesville police have dropped charges against Patrick McNamara for the January 12 assault of a woman on the Rivanna Trail. The case against McNamara has been dismissed, but the arrest continues to affect his life.
On January 18, McNamara was taking a break outside while working from his apartment when he was approached by a CPD detective and placed under arrest. “It is not wise to talk to the police even if you’re innocent. I’m naive and thought, ‘this is a mistake,’” he says. “I didn’t know what I was being arrested for.”
Court filings indicate McNamara was arrested based on eyewitness identification by the victim, who was assaulted at approximately 9:39am on January 12 less than half a mile from the Rivanna Trail underpass at Free Bridge. The victim described the suspect as a “white male with short brown hair and an athletic build, approximately 6’2″, possibly 20-30 years old … wearing a white puffy jacket with a dark hooded sweatshirt underneath, which was pulled up over his head.”
When shown an image of McNamara by a friend on January 16, the victim identified him as her attacker. She later told law enforcement she was “100 percent positive” it was McNamara who assaulted her, according to court filings.
Following his arraignment and release on bond, McNamara was suspended from his job and given three days to vacate his apartment by his leasing company.
On January 22, investigators obtained surveillance footage from Cosner Brothers Body Shop. The video shows McNamara passing the victim without incident, and later a different individual in a puffy white coat can be seen in the area.
The person who collected the video initially told the case agent there was “nothing of value” on the recording, and “never prepared a supplement documenting its collection.”
The commonwealth’s attorney’s office was not aware of the surveillance footage or its content until April 9, following a letter submitted by McNamara’s attorney—Rhonda Quagliana—on April 8 requesting police obtain surveillance and video footage from 19 locations.
Charlottesville Police are currently conducting an internal investigation into the handling of the footage.
Both the commonwealth’s attorney’s office and Quagliana filed motions to dismiss the charges against McNamara on April 11. While Quagliana’s filing is a complete rebuke of law enforcement’s treatment of McNamara and its handling of the case, the commonwealth called for a dismissal on the grounds that “there is no longer proof beyond a reasonable doubt to support this prosecution.”
The charges against him have been dropped, but McNamara’s trying to piece his life back together: He still hasn’t heard from his job about reentry, he still doesn’t have a place to live, and he still feels isolated.
“The truth of the matter is that there’s permanent damage,” says McNamara. “I’m upset at the presumption of guilt that was levied upon me by all the institutions in my life.”
“I know I’m innocent. It’s hard for me to articulate to somebody what it feels like,” he says. “I have a lot of really good friends and I’m very thankful for that. I know that their assumption was, ‘Patrick couldn’t have done this, this is ridiculous.’ But to what degree of certainty I will never know.”
McNamara says the arrest has impacted all of his personal relationships.
“The commonwealth’s attorney made it sound like … ‘we don’t have enough to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt.’ The police chief has spoken publicly since then and said, ‘we didn’t have enough to go beyond reasonable doubt,’” says McNamara. “That’s embarrassing language. … It’s just, frankly, it’s bullshit. And because of that, people will always doubt maybe I did it.”
Charlottesville Police Department declined to answer questions from C-VILLE about the handling of the investigation and interactions with McNamara. “Chief Kochis has done numerous engagements on various media outlets regarding the case,” wrote Public Safety Information Officer Kyle Ervin in an email. “Please refer to any previous comments made on the matter.”
As he contemplates how to move forward, McNamara says he is speaking to lawyers about potential legal action, but what he wants most is change and a return to normalcy.
“I don’t think it’ll ever be the same as it was on January 17,” he says. “I think there’s gonna be difficulties until the arrest is completely expunged from my record.”
“What happened in the legal process was unacceptable,” McNamara says. “It is scary. It is dangerous. And I am just a random, nameless citizen of this town that was caught up in this system. And if it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody. And that, to me, is very scary until there’s change. What does change look like? I don’t know.”
At press time CPD has not issued a news release about McNamara’s charges being dropped, and has not updated the original release detailing his arrest.
Dozens of local artists gather to draw and paint together in the heart of downtown at Gallery Rally 2024. Now in its ninth year, the creative-community-driven event affords art lovers the opportunity to meet artists, talk with them about their work, and witness acts of creation firsthand. Each of the works made during the rally is available to take home for just $100, which allows both fledgling and experienced collectors an occasion to celebrate.
Saturday 4/27. Free, 4pm. Second Street Gallery, 115 Second St. SE. secondstreetgallery.org
While heavily grounded in the music of their native Mexico City, Grammy Award-winning guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela brings weightier world music to their incendiary stage shows. With influences ranging from flamenco and classic rock, to heavy metal, spiritualism, and philosophy, their albums and live concerts serve as transcendent listening experiences that set both the stage and soul alight.
Friday 4/26. $39.75-74.75, 8pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. theparamount.net
Singer-songwriter Brandy Clark’s new album got some expert attention from producer Brandi Carlile. Clark performs at The Jefferson Theater on Wednesday, April 24. Publicity photo.
By Aaron Irons
Brandy Clark has long been a lauded pen among Nashville songwriters, landing hits with chart-toppers like Kacey Musgraves and Miranda Lambert, while handily stepping out with her own records woven from classic country and contemporary heart-on-the-sleeve fearlessness.
On her self-titled fourth album, Clark is as powerful as ever, showcasing stunning personal narratives alongside blood-and-bone ballads that survey fresh angles bound by neither convention nor cliché.
“I think that’s always the challenge of a songwriter and a singer,” says Clark, who on her latest release maneuvers through tales of heartbreak, homicide, and home. “There are songs that aren’t hard for me to find a way into—like ‘Take Mine.’ I wrote that for my godson. And ‘Dear Insecurity’ [which won the 2023 Grammy for Best Americana Performance], I wrote about my own insecurities.”
On “Tell Her You Don’t Love Her,” Clark implores a friend’s ex for mercy, an act the album’s producer, Brandi Carlile, approached with skepticism.
“Whenever I go into a project with any producer, I like to give them the last 18 to 24 songs that we whittled down from my catalog,” says Clark. “You just get too close to [songs] at some point. I always think of the producer as the last writer on the songs … and the only song that Brandi didn’t choose that I was set on [recording] was ‘Tell Her You Don’t Love Her.’ She said, ‘I just don’t believe that from you.’”
Clark says the song was written about a friend whose ex-boyfriend was stringing her along, and Clark wanted the guy to “stop the long goodbye,” and just tell her friend he didn’t love her. And that “really shifted it for [Carlile],” says Clark, adding that Carlile’s problem with the song was its “small emotion: ‘You are pleading with this guy to let your friend off the hook. It’s not a big, aggressive emotion,’ so we broke it down really small, and by the end of the recording [Carlile] said, ‘You know, that’s top three for me now.’”
After connecting during the pandemic lockdown, Clark and Carlile (dubbed BC Squared) collaborated on two tracks that would ultimately appear on the deluxe edition of Clark’s 2020 album Your Life is a Record. Clark says that working with another musician was an eye-opening experience.
“The thing that Brandi was really good at—I mean, she’s great at several things—but one of the big things was holding a mirror up in front of my face and saying, ‘Okay, is this really you? And if it’s not really you, what’s your way into it?’’’
Another track, “Ain’t Enough Rocks,” tells the graphic story of a father sexually abusing his daughters and meeting an end at the bottom of a river. In the song’s final moments, Clark delivers the chill-inducing line, “Sometimes the only cure for a certain kind of problem is the right amount of limestone to keep it at the bottom.”
“That was one that everybody fought for but me because I was a little timid to do that song because I’m not a survivor of abuse,” Clark says. “I didn’t wanna come off as pretending I was for a song. Brandi said, ‘A, this is a great song. And B, I believe you when you sing it. It’s a story song and there’s something in this story that you resonate with.’”
Clark says it’s the last verse that resonates with her, and “I think there’s some crimes that don’t deserve a jury, and that was my way into that. I know that sounds so black and white and awful, but I just feel like there are some things that are so terrible, people should at least never breathe free air again.”
The song, co-written with Jessie Jo Dillon and Jimmy Robbins, also features an appearance by guitarist Derek Trucks, who first turned down the project because his studio was not open, but Carlisle sent it anyway. “He was so inspired by the song that he figured out a way to do it,” says Clark. “So that makes me feel amazing as a writer on that song.”
Clark calls her latest collection a raw version of herself, and though some critics and fans may be surprised by her more bare-knuckle moments, this isn’t a reinvention, it’s a live-edge cut of the songwriter.
“I’ve been in the world of trying to write commercial songs,” says Clark. “I’ve never been really great at writing commercial songs. A lot of people think I am because I’ve had a few hits, but overall, I’ve had a lot more non-commercial songs.
“But you get into that mindset of a certain, for lack of a better word, formula,” she adds. “And Brandi doesn’t know that formula. So for me to bring in some structure and her to bring in some non-structure, I think we landed in a really great place.”
Long before he was a successful businessman, pilot, and entrepreneur, it was evident that Bill Crutchfield’s fate was to be the main character of his story, whatever that may be. In 1950, at 8 years old, he built his first radio. At 13, he built what was, to the best of his knowledge, “the first stereo system in Virginia.”
“It was very crude by today’s standards,” he says. “I combined two sets of speakers connected to two separate mono hi-fi amplifiers in my bedroom. They were connected to a two-channel tape head mounted to an old office reel-to-reel tape recorder.”
Crutchfield’s father was the head of neurology at the University of Virginia, and a man his son describes as “an early adopter of technology.” That forward-thinking, open-mindedness wouldn’t simply be passed down to his son—it would be amplified by his talent, augmented by his experience, and harnessed as one of Bill Crutchfield’s greatest assets as an entrepreneur.
This aptitude for detecting trends, and Crutchfield’s ability to detect problems and solve them before they exist, were what helped him turn his modest car stereo business into an electronics empire that became one of Charlottesville’s flagship businesses.
“I wanted to restore old Porsches,” Crutchfield says. “And that’s when I noticed that there was a real lack of car stereo retailers. I thought it was a market that was really underserved at that time. That’s how I found my niche.”
Prior to the 1970s, car audio systems were something that came stock from the factory, and their availability from third-party retailers was extremely limited. Until the advent of the 8-track tape, the sound system in a vehicle was thought of as a luxury by many—an afterthought. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, as cassette tapes became the popular album format, car audio exploded into a million-dollar industry. By that time, Crutchfield had already established itself as one of the premier names in the business, not through the promulgation of retail stores like most of their main competitors, but through their mail-order business and the Crutchfield “magalog.”
“Our first catalog was a disaster,” Crutchfield says. “A lot of it was wiring diagrams we drew ourselves, and it just didn’t work very well. Our second one wasn’t much better. I thought it would be a good idea to start including articles about installing these devices in our catalog, but it went against everything people knew about advertising and marketing back then to use space for anything other than sales copy. But that was when we really started seeing some success, was with our ‘magalog.’”
While Bill Crutchfield was building his business, he says he worked 100 hours or more almost every week. He credits this work ethic, along with finding the right niche and even his name, as possible reasons for the success of his 50-year-old company. Photo by Eze Amos.
As the company was making its name in the mail-order business, Crutchfield’s retail store was becoming more popular in Charlottesville, and its advertising on radio and television in the area became inescapable. The company outgrew building after building, eventually constructing its headquarters and fulfillment center beside the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport.
Arriving at 1 Crutchfield Circle for the first time, I notice that the building is earth-sheltered, with the ground built up around it for temperature regulation. Forty years before “going green” was a thing, Crutchfield designed his company headquarters to be one of the most energy efficient commercial buildings in the world at that time. I walk through the door and, after a firm, old-school handshake, Crutchfield invites me to tour the facility with him.
We hop in his electric Mercedes-Benz, and silently glide through the rain between the three different properties that make up the Crutchfield complex. The first stop on the tour is the call center, a soft-white cubicle matrix dotted with personalized workspaces, comfy chairs, and baby gates used to keep people’s dogs confined in their own workspaces.
“We’re a dog-friendly company,” Crutchfield says, a bit of an understatement, given that every third person seems to have a furry friend with them.
Everywhere we walk, inspirational messages adorn the walls. At first glance, they seem like the pseudo-spiritual posters created to motivate employees stuck in the daily office grind. What I don’t realize is that what hangs on the walls at Crutchfield isn’t the trite clichés so commonly used as filler for blank office spaces. I am reading Bill Crutchfield’s core values, something everyone takes seriously, and with good reason: They saved his company.
It was the 1980s, and Crutchfield was struggling.
“Our 1982 sales grew significantly while our profits nosedived,” Crutchfield says. “In 1983, our financial situation worsened. Sales fell by 10 percent, and earnings turned negative. Our cash reserves dwindled rapidly because of these losses. By spring, I had to take out more short-term bank loans to help cover these losses.”
He sought help, and one vice president was vocal about his belief that Crutchfield needed to spend less on the quality of his magazine and customer support, and focus on matching his competitor’s prices. Crutchfield even got input from the University of Virginia undergraduate business school (for which he chaired the advisory committee). A professor wrote a case study that concluded, “Crutchfield Corporation has gotten bigger than Bill Crutchfield can handle.”
Crutchfield spent several weeks and months contemplating the problem, and the conclusion he came to was that the issue with his company was one of culture and not of capital.
“During this lonely intellectual probing, I read a statement which was so appropriate to our situation that it was almost uncanny,” Crutchfield wrote on the company website in a retrospective post. “It was made by Thomas Watson, Jr. during a lecture at Columbia University in 1962. The IBM chair said, ‘I firmly believe that any organization, in order to survive and achieve success, must have a sound set of beliefs on which it premises all its policies and actions. Next … I believe that if an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except those beliefs as it moves through corporate life.’
“Now I understood exactly what the problem was,” Crutchfield continued. “My company once had a set of common beliefs—my beliefs. When the company was much smaller, I was instinctively able to ensure that everyone adhered to my beliefs. As it grew, I had to delegate decision-making to others. As a result, my beliefs and the company’s beliefs gradually started to diverge. By 1983, they were vastly different. Since this change had occurred so slowly, I never fully recognized the problem until I read Mr. Watson’s comments.”
Crutchfield’s campaign to reinstill his values into the company he built began with the obvious task of defining those values. First, the total satisfaction of the customer is paramount. Second, respect for dedication to your fellow employees. Third, maintaining a commitment to excellence. Paramount above all three things, though, is a very simple, ancient maxim: Treat others as you want to be treated.
Through training, innovation, incentives, and discipline, he began to regain control of his company’s culture and morale. It was a crucial time, and it’s why many people, including Chief Human Resources Officer Chris Lilley and Chief Content Officer Amy Lenert, say the culture and camaraderie within the company is what makes Crutchfield such an amazing place to work.
“Working in creative [departments], there can be a certain amount of egos involved,” Lenert says. “That really just … doesn’t exist here. Honestly. Everyone’s really on the same team.”
“I came on in ’94,” Lilley says. “I thought I would be here maybe a couple years.”
Lilley says it was during the COVID-19 pandemic that the true commitment toward each other and the business really shined.
“We were open because the governor kept a lot of businesses with shipping capacity open in case they needed the distribution access for PPE,” he says. “So we were dealing with that, plus all the people working remotely, and in the middle of all that, sales went through the roof. It was up, like, 30 percent. I mean, it was crazy. And in the middle of all that, Bill came and we were talking and he said something I’ll never forget. He said, ‘You need to understand: You and I are responsible for 400 families.’ I think it’s even more than that now. But I think that’s what really makes me love my job, is having someone who shares my values and really wants to take care of people.”
When Lilley talks about Crutchfield—both the company and the man—“taking care of people,” it isn’t euphemistic. Crutchfield was the driving force behind smoking cessation programs in his company in the ’80s, back when you could still smoke on some airplanes. He was concerned about the environment when he built his primary corporate headquarters building in 1977. When Crutchfield recognized the negative environmental impact of styrofoam packing peanuts, he came up with a biodegradable, starch-based replacement that is manufactured in-house.
“Sometimes, I tell people from Charlottesville I work for Crutchfield,” Lenert says. “And sometimes they’re like, ‘the stereo store?’” in reference to the company’s retail space on 29 North near Rio Hill. “We’re a multi-million dollar company, with four huge buildings, hundreds of employees. … All I tell them is, ‘it’s so much more than a store.’”
Civil War, starring Jesse Plemons, combines fear and fantasy in a dystopian take on America’s political divide. A24.
Alex Garland’s newest film Civil War presents a vision of a war-torn, near-future United States that taps into many Americans’ fears of the worst-case endgame of ever-growing political divisiveness. It’s a promising idea, but this uneven movie is loaded with ridiculous plot holes, and despite delivering several impressive scenes, the film doesn’t maintain its level of quality.
A few years from now, America is splintered into various warring factions that are never fully spelled out. Some of these groups are semi-realistic, Portland Maoists are mentioned, while others strain believability, and talk of a Texas-California alliance seems like pure fantasy. Within this hellish landscape, seasoned combat photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) set out for Washington, D.C., to land an interview with the president (Nick Offerman) before he’s captured and executed.
Following these two characters would make for a solid film, but, inexplicably, they bring along two companions on the dangerous mission: veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and aspiring photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Sammy is physically incapable of keeping up on the arduous journey, and Jessie is inexperienced, and they just seem shoehorned in to liven up the plot.
Civil War really shines when it depicts a war-ravaged nation devouring itself, including a key stop in Charlottesville. The film excels when it focuses on this nightmare intruding into the mundane: distant fires and tracer bullets flying over ordinary American buildings, a carwash turned into a torture chamber, or a wrecked helicopter in a JCPenney parking lot. Another strength is its little details, like how Lee buys gas with Canadian dollars, American money having become devalued like Confederate bills after the real Civil War.
Other high points are the tense, very bloody action sequences, including an encounter with two sarcastic snipers and the final assault on Washington, D.C. With only a few exceptions, the visual effects throughout are hellishly convincing.
Alex Garland is a frustrating filmmaker who never fully delivers on the promise of his films’ concepts. His movies are marked by intermittent scenes of real wit and talent, and long stretches where their plots completely disintegrate, as in the horribly muddled Men. Civil War is no exception. Seeing the vast American warzone through the photojournalists’ dispassionate—even cold-blooded—coverage was a sound basic concept, but injecting the two supporting characters was simply bad plotting. There are other significant flaws in the story, but revealing them would involve spoilers.
The cast is mostly fine, even when saddled with clunky dialogue. All the below-the-line talent on the film is first-rate across the board, including costume design, production design, makeup, and particularly visual effects. Garland and his team get bonus points for making unusual musical choices and not going for ironically traditional patriotic music.
Civil War deliberately avoids political partisanship, which will relieve some viewers and annoy others. This opaque approach doesn’t detract much from its quality, but it does point to an overall concept that’s too vague for its own good. There is so much about the film that better writers could have cleared up. But since this particular Civil War is so hotly divided between its virtues and its flaws, in the end, there’s no victory—just a draw.
