Author: Alana Bittner

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Arts Culture

Right at home

Chinchilla Café founders Fabian Garcia, Gabriela Toledo, Robin Brown, Eli Draizen, and Lane Rasberry are leading the DIY venue revival. Photo by Lane Rasberry / Creative Commons License.

It’s not false advertising, there really are chinchillas at Chinchilla Café. Three of them: Pip, Napoleon, and Starr Baby. You can even pet them and feed them treats. “At first, we just tried to get people over to play with the chinchillas,” says café co-organizer Lane Rasberry. “But nobody came, so we started hosting shows instead.” 

When Magnolia House closed in 2020, many mourned the end of Charlottesville’s DIY music scene. But then Chinchilla Café appeared. Billing itself as a “concert venue, community center, and animal coffeehouse,” it’s the underground revival we’ve been waiting for.

Bands play in what would otherwise be the living room. The walls are decorated with chinchilla portraits and rainbow flags, while multi-colored Christmas lights create a spacey glow. Between acts, guests meet the chinchillas or hang out on the back porch, where a projector plays surreal videos from the internet. “We’re looking for people to have intense and trippy experiences, however they might come,” says Rasberry.

Over 60 bands have performed at the house since the café opened in August 2021, including locals Shagwüf, Violet Club, and Emily Rose, as well as acts from up and down the East Coast. And the shows can be delightfully eclectic. A recent concert veered from the experimental pop sounds of New York artist Coffee Nap, to the mind-melting jazz fusion of Charlottesville’s Angelica X. The common denominator is that café promoter Eli Draizen likes what he hears.

Putting on the shows is a group effort, and Draizen has been essential to the venue’s launch. “I always wanted to have a music venue in my living room,” he says, citing inspiration from house shows he saw growing up in California. Co-organizer Robin Brown sees her contribution as two parts: “One, make sure everyone has fun and feels comfortable. But two, make sure we’re doing important things and keeping it a queer, radical space.” 

“Chinchilla Café is not a neutral space,” says Rasberry. “Whatever it is that gets people to make positive change in their community, we want to bring that in.” Shows frequently promote work by local activist organizations, such as anarchist bookstore F12, Cville Area Harm Reduction, or Arm Trans Women.

Meanwhile, all ticket proceeds go to the bands, not the café itself. “When we host a band, there is no stress on them to be part of an investor and owner’s business cycle,” explains Rasberry. “A typical commercial venue has no values, as the norm in business is bland neutrality and facelessness.” In contrast, “Every time we do something at Chinchilla Café, we want it to have a purpose.”

If popularity is any indication, people are craving places with purpose. “So many bands are reaching out to Instagram right now, it’s hard to keep up,” says Draizen, who has already booked shows through May. Brown says it speaks to the need for more spaces that are not purely driven by profit. 

The Chinchilla organizers are happily part of an expanding scene of nontraditional venues around town. In the past few months, Visible Records, Cville Skates, and The Rug Shop have all hosted shows. “I want more of that,” Brown says. “I hope this inspires people to say, ‘Wait, I could do that, I could have bands come here.’”

Grassroots spaces provide something special, because “for many people they start by wanting an evening of entertainment,” says Rasberry. “But to have a [DIY, nonprofit] community center means they meet friends with whom they might not otherwise connect, they learn of activist causes they might not find otherwise, they hear music which has local flavor which could not come from any other city. They make the memories that make living in this city … different from any other.”

Chinchilla’s next show features Hot Spit, Yard Sale, Laveda, and Marti on March 9. Ticket and music schedules are posted through Instagram at chinchilla_cafe_cville. 

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2022 Best of C-VILLE Staff Picks

A new leaf

Photo: Eze Amos

Local foodies of the greener persuasion have been getting some love lately, with four plant-based eateries opening in the past few months. Check out the following to get your fill of vegetarian and vegan goodness. 

Botanical Fare: This downtown lunch spot fulfills your daily servings of fruits and veggies with its soups, sandwiches, and Insta-worthy bowls like the Crunchy Cauliflower, with white beans, mango, and cauliflower nugs. 

Vegan Comforts Soul Food: Who says comfort food can’t be vegan? Inspired by her daughter’s dietary restrictions, owner Casandra Rodriguez whips up mouthwatering batches of biscuits and gravy, lasagna, and “Mac no cheese,” 100 percent vegan and allergy-friendly. Catch the pop-up locations around town. 

GRNBRGR: No diet’s complete without the all-American classic, and Dairy Market’s GRNBRGR is committed to making burgers better. Each one—from the Street Double to the Bacon Ranch—is vegetarian and “easily vegan.” 

Organic Krush Lifestyle Eatery: The East Coast chain comes to Stonefield, serving up all-day breakfast, bone broth, and bowls, as well as an impressive array of smoothies and juices.

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2022 Best of C-VILLE Staff Picks

Blowing in the wind

Photo: Tristan Williams

That clarinet gathering dust in your closet isn’t going to play itself, is it? Lucky for you, The Center’s Second-Wind Band offers seniors an opportunity to, well, play it again. Organized in 1994, Second-Wind is a group of experienced musicians that performs classical, Broadway, patriotic, and holiday music during two annual concerts at The Center, as well as a few other venues around town. And a one, and a two…

Categories
Arts Culture

Freedom in movement

Charlottesville Ballet returns after a two year hiatus to present Connections, a collaborative effort between professional choreographers and the Charlottesville community. Publicity photo.

While developing the choreography for Connections, its original production that premieres May 7, Charlottesville Ballet had some big questions. 

For answers, the company, coming off a two-year pandemic hiatus, turned to its own dance academy, outreach programs, and the broader Charlottesville community, and asked:  What does freedom mean to you? and When did you feel a true sense of belonging? 

Ballet, says Emily Hartka, Charlottesville Ballet’s co-director, is “a mirror of what happens in our society.” And she wanted suggestions for how to “tell the stories of our time.”  

Connections, created in collaboration with the Charlottesville Symphony, Lighthouse Studios, and the UVA Democracy Initiative, explores the power of dance to connect and unite. It features works by four choreographers of color from Virginia and Washington, D.C., and includes traditional pieces, such as Brandye Lee’s “Req,” and Maggie Small’s “A La Folie,” as well as Jason Ambrose’s contemporary work, “For Now I Am…,” which includes a stunning array of rotating mirrors.  

The centerpiece of the performance is Keith Lee’s “The Orion Constellations.” Lee, the company’s artist laureate and director of diversity and inclusion, used the community’s responses to inspire five choreographed movements, and asked the respondents to record themselves performing those movements. With the help of Lighthouse Studios, the recordings became projections that will be shown as a backdrop to the dancers during “The Orion Constellations.” Lee says this virtual community cast is a powerful example of “Charlottesville Ballet’s work to bring accessibility and inclusion to the art of ballet.” 

The first African American soloist at the American Ballet Theater in 1970, Lee has choreographed for companies across the U.S., and in Connections, his work ranges from Le Corsaire, a traditional ballet from 1856, to “Just Make Believe,” a piece that reflects on 2017’s Unite the Right Rally. 

In tandem with the premiere, audience members are invited to attend Democracy & Dance, a discussion panel that features Lee and Brandye Lee (no relation), as well as Dr. Marie Chee, who instructs CB’s 50-and-older dance program, and Christina Johnson, a guest coach who’s featured in Misty Copeland’s book Black Ballerinas. The conversation will center around using performing arts to unite people, asking how dance can help create an inclusive public culture.

Charlottesville Ballet began as a professional company, and Hartka and co-director Sarah Clayborne were only 19 and 20 years old when they founded it in 2007. The pair, who met while dancing for Richmond Ballet, grew up in the professional ballet world, and had concerns about it. Hartka experienced group weigh-ins and demands to conform to a certain body type, which she says contributed to years of struggling with eating disorders. “We couldn’t articulate it at the time, but we knew there had to be a better way,” she says. “We had a vision of a company that would respect its artists.” 

At CB, their vision celebrates ballet options for every body type and removing barriers to dance classes. The organization also prioritizes health and wellness in training. “We bring science and education to the curriculum, such as physiology on how the body functions and moves,” she says. “That’s not always standard in the classical ballet world [that believes] you either have the jump, or the body, or the turnout, or you don’t.”

In the early years, Hartka and Clayborne would joke that their professional company was a rehab for dancers unaccustomed to wellness-centered training. Then they realized that joke reflected a dire need. “Wait—maybe [ballet education] shouldn’t traumatize the children from age 3 on,” Hartka remembers discussing. “Maybe we should start at a young age with healthy training, so they don’t have to come to us for rehab.” In 2011, they began the Charlottesville Ballet Academy, and what started as a program with 60 students now has 600, with classes in ballet, tap, jazz, and hip hop.

The third tier of Charlottesville Ballet is the community outreach program, CB Moves. The classes are free and for those underrepresented in the ballet world, including seniors, Parkinson’s patients, and students with disabilities. CB Moves also partners with public elementary schools for classes and opportunities to win lifetime scholarships to the Charlottesville Ballet Academy. 

“We’re trying to follow [our core values of accessibility and inclusion] in an authentic way and live it every day,” says Hartka. Connections, with its focus on community and diverse voices in dance, is just another part of that…“a celebration, but also a moment of reflection on the ties between us all.” 

Categories
Culture Food & Drink

Sandwiched in

Morgan Hurt and Gabriel Garcia have created a cult following for their Kitchenette sandwiches, including the Hot Wet Beef (above), which “started it all.” Staff photo.

“It was the Hot Wet Beef that started it all,” says Morgan Hurt. 

Kitchenette, the lunchtime sandwich shop Hurt co-founded with her partner, Gabriel Garcia, boasts 22 different subs, hoagies, and rolls. But the Hot Wet Beef, a juicy roast beef hoagie with eggplant and pepper spread, is the OG. The inspiration came after a bite of a roast beef sandwich in Brooklyn, a sensory experience Hurt describes as beautiful. That’s when the couple realized Charlottesville needed a place that would “combine sandwiches with actual food.”

With 20 years of restaurant experience between them, Hurt and Garcia are well-prepared  to take on a casual, gourmet concept. “Dealing with food is fun!” says Hurt, a Charlottesville native who met Mexico City native Garcia while working at an Asheville, North Carolina, restaurant. In 2006, they moved to C’ville and worked at Vivace and The Whiskey Jar before opening Kitchen Catering and Events, in 2013.  

They hadn’t forgotten about that magical moment with the roast beef sandwich in Brooklyn, though. In their free time, they found themselves crafting subs for friends, and trying out new flavor combinations. Hurt gushes about the appeal of sandwiches. “They are just the perfect food! They’re portable and you can do anything with them,” she says. In 2017, the pair opened Kitchenette, intending the sandwich shop to be a side project to their catering business. But when the pandemic slowed the events business, Kitchenette became their focus.  

In June 2020, Kitchenette moved from a warehouse to a cozy Victorian home, tucked off of East High Street. The space is bright and has a familial feel. There’s a jar of dog treats for pups, and kids love the tables’ novelty salt-and-pepper shakers, which range from dinosaurs to kiwi birds. The new location came with a vintage clawfoot tub in the bathroom, and Hurt jokes that “the sandwiches are so messy, we offer a bath!”

A restaurant space gives Hurt and Garcia the opportunity to flex their culinary creativity and have some fun. Their stuffed sandwiches boast bold flavors and fresh ingredients, with quirky names to match. “Honestly,” says Hurt, “we have to restrain ourselves because we get very dorky with it.” Some, like Penny and Oliver’s Dream, are named after their dogs. Others, like The Ramona, are named after soccer moves. Even AC/DC’s Angus Young gets a shout-out with the Angus Yum. The Squeal is a slappin’ pork and bacon sammie with apple-ginger chutney, while The Jive Turkey’s blend of turkey, cranberry mayo, and crunchy onions elevates your average day-after-Thanksgiving concoction. The flavorful sides include curried chickpea salad, tangy kale salad, and soup of the day.

It’s guided by one goal: “We like to make it for our palates,” says Hurt, “It’s always something that we would want to eat.” Customers agree, say Hurt and Garcia, who love how regulars are always down to try the daily specials. “A lot of people are like, ‘I’ve never had anything bad here, so sure!’” says Hurt. “That’s really cool because they trust us to make it right.”

If Kitchenette is new to you, that’s part of the plan. The eatery’s founders purposely kept advertising to a minimum. “It’s given us the opportunity to learn as we grow,” says Garcia. “We feel lucky that we’ve grown more organically.” Yet it’s hard to keep good food a secret in Charlottesville, and their reputation has spread, well, through word of mouth. “We used to have slow days. There are no more slow days,” laughs Garcia. They’ve also noticed more and more customers ask about parking. “We’re like, this is cool!” says Hurt. “It means they’re not from the neighborhood, we’re spidering out.”

But Hurt and Garcia won’t let the growth change a thing. Their goal for Kitchenette is simple: “We just want it to taste good,” Hurt says. 

Categories
Culture Food & Drink

Pizza pi

Giovanni Sestito credits his Italian heritage and a background in math for his mastery of Vita Nova’s perfect pizza. Photo: Eze Amos

“Fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil—that is the perfect pizza!” 

Giovanni Sestito, owner of Vita Nova Pizza and Pasta Bar, sings the praises of the Caprese’s toppings. “When you look at it, it’s lively, it’s inviting. It’s flavorful, but it’s simple,” he says. Thanks to that compelling combo, the Caprese has remained a staple on Sestito’s menu throughout the years. “That never goes away,” says Sestito. “That stays.”

The same could be said for Vita Nova. The pizza joint has been serving slices, calzones, pasta, salads, and tiramisu on the Downtown Mall for the past 25 years—more than half of the pedestrian mall’s entire existence. Now, due to building renovations, the restaurant has moved for the first time, directly across the mall to a bright corner location with a stylish interior.

Sestito is a quiet and unassuming man, an Italian immigrant in his 70s, devoted to pizza, but also a math major who speaks four languages. He says  Dante’s La Vita Nuova inspired the name of his restaurant (it means “new life” in Latin). The name was significant in other ways too—when he opened Vita Nova, Sestito was embarking on a new life, as a recent arrival to the United States. 

Vita Nova Pizza and Pasta Bar recently moved into a new space across the street from its old location. Photo: Eze Amos.

Sestito was 11 in 1954, when his family emigrated from Calabria, Italy, to San Juan, Argentina, joining a wave of Italians seeking better opportunities in South America post-World War II. Sestito grew up in Argentina, and made a living teaching math. Then, in the early 1980s, he won a scholarship to study at the University of Waterloo in Canada, where he earned a master’s degree in math. From Canada, Sestito followed his two brothers to the United States.

In Massachusetts, his career moved in a new direction, and with the help of his brother, Sestito opened his first restaurant. When his brother moved south, Sestito did too, and arrived in Charlottesville in 1997. He bought Sylvia’s Pizza on the Downtown Mall, and changed the name to Vita Nova in 2006. 

How does a math major learn to run a pizza place? “By reading and the force of stubbornness,” laughs Sestito. He quickly became a pizza nerd who’s not afraid to do his research—he once called the General Mills hotline to get the nitty-gritty on a certain kind of flour. 

Other things, however, you learn on the job, such as the quirks of the American palate. “One of my first experiences running the store,” Sestito remembers, “this guy came in and said, ‘I want a pizza with everything.’” To Sestito, this was ridiculous. “I told him, ‘We have 72 toppings. Are you sure you want everything?’” 

“In Italy, they don’t expect more than two or three toppings on their pizza,” he says. Beyond the harmony of flavors, this ensures the dough rises properly in the oven, without getting too weighed down. But try telling Americans that.

Another early lesson came while working on the Downtown Mall during Fridays After Five. “It was surreal,” says Sestito. “There were double lines, for two, three, four hours. It was nonstop!” 

As hectic as it was, he misses those days. “The Downtown Mall was the heart of the city,” he says. What he sees today isn’t the same. “The people on the Downtown Mall need support. The backbone of the American economy is small business, but they have been the hardest hit by the pandemic and online shopping.” 

For Sestito, the key is thinking globally and shopping locally. “A small store on the Downtown Mall pays taxes to the city,” explains Sestito, so if you want your city to thrive, “you have to spend your money where you live.” 

The pizzamaker experienced the power of community during the pandemic. With his lunch crowds disappearing due to online work, he seriously considered shutting down. But longtime Vita Nova customers were not about to let that happen. Sestito was astounded by the outpouring of support. “So many people asked me to stay,” he says. “And to stay on the mall, not anywhere else. That expression of solidarity really makes you rethink, so I decided to give this another chance.” 

He’s grateful he stayed open, though it was not without hardships. Vito Nova went from a staff of seven employees to just two, and Sestito had to make the unexpected move to its new location. A typical week for him involves going into the shop every day, often working from 8 in the morning to 10 at night.

But pizzamaking is something he loves. He waxes poetic on the finer points of pizza toppings, and gets a dreamy look in his eye when weighing in on the thin-crust/thick-crust debate. What’s more, the business feels like family. Luis, the guy most likely ringing you up at Vita Nova, has worked with Sestito for 29 years. 

When asked about his plans for the future, Sestito laughs. “My father didn’t retire till he was 85, so I still have a few years in me,” he says, as he gestures fondly to the new space. “I plan on being here for a while.”

Categories
Arts Culture

Time stamp

Artists clockwise from left: Alex Gould, Clay Witt, Tim Michel, Lillianne Milgrom, and Barbara Page.

The hollowing out of the U.S. Postal Service might not be the most dramatic thing that’s caused stress and anxiety over the last 18 months—but for Chroma Projects, it’s the motivation behind “Pandemonium: Postcards from the Edge,” the gallery’s latest installation. 

When co-curators Deborah McLeod and Sarah Sargent (a C-VILLE contributor) invited artists to reflect on their experiences during the pandemic, they thought postcards were the perfect medium for it. They’re “inexpensive, democratic, humble, and extremely portable objects,” the curators say. Plus, sending them in the mail supports the post office—an act of positive change in the face of grim circumstances.  

In answer to the call for contributions, nearly 100 postcards arrived, postmarked from around the country and the world. Each artist, whether sculptor, painter, or filmmaker, faced the same template: a small rectangle of paper not to exceed more than 4.25 X 6 inches. It pushed people out of their comfort zone, and functioned as “a metaphor for how we have all been pushed out of normalcy during the pandemic,” the curators say. 

Artists used a range of mediums—charcoal, gold leaf, even embroidery—to transform their postcards into show pieces. Barbara Page’s “Where I Wasn’t 2020-2021” is a collage of antique stamps depicting tropical, faraway places that expresses longing for new scenery while trapped in social isolation. Alex Gould’s “Points” features watercolor drawings of two arrowheads, dated 7500 BC and 1200 AD, followed by a vaccine needle, dated 2021 AD. It places this interminable current moment into a larger context, a reminder of the challenges we’ve faced throughout history.  

Lined up on the gallery wall, the postcards mimic dozens of Zoom boxes. Yet refreshingly, this Zoom screen is not a soul-sucking experience. Instead, it reflects back not our own preening image, but a reminder that even in the darkest of times, there’s opportunity for creativity and hope.

“Pandemonium: Postcards from the Edge.” 

Chroma Projects Art Laboratory

Through October 31

Categories
Culture

Steeped in it

UVA alum Christina Wagner says she’s drawn to tea ceremonies because of the community they create. Photo: Eze Amos.

Sitting on the back deck at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, Christina Wagner carefully measures out tea leaf with her fingers. “Tea is a great place to exercise intuition,” she says.

Laid out on the table before us are the elements of a Chinese gong-fu tea ceremony. There’s a metal teapot filled with hot water heated by a candle, an empty glass pitcher, and a traditional Chinese gai-wan—a tea-steeping cup with a saucer and lid. We each have a tiny tea bowl, and an offering cup sits nearby. 

In Mandarin, gong-fu means “with skill.” In a tea ceremony, this refers to the effort of drawing out the best possible flavor from the leaf. To do so, a gong-fu ceremony uses more vessels than your typical teapot and mug. To begin, Wagner puts the loose leaf tea (a Chinese green called Ancient Forest) into the gai-wan and covers it with hot water. After 15 seconds, she deftly picks up the gai-wan with one hand and tilts the lid back with her finger, letting the liquid strain into the glass pitcher. This is also called the fairness pitcher, since it halts the steeping process and lets everyone taste tea that’s the same strength. Wagner holds the pitcher up to the light, admiring the “clean golden color.” The first serving goes to the offering cup, as thanks. The next pour is for us.

The first infusion is the time to notice the tea’s lighter, more floral tones. As we go through the infusion process four more times, the florals are replaced by a fuller mouthfeel and a strong taste of camphor emerges. We learn how one batch of tea morphs and evolves. “You would never brew it fewer than three times, because it’s disrespectful to the leaf,” says Wagner.

Growing up in Madison County, tea wasn’t a large part of Wagner’s life. After graduating from UVA and moving to Portland, Oregon, she took a job at a shop called Tao of Tea. “I didn’t even know that that level of tea world existed,” says Wagner. For training, she toured warehouses, tea packing facilities, and teahouses. When she wasn’t preparing tea ceremonies for others, she was trying new teas, working her way through Tao’s extensive menu. When she returned to Charlottesville in 2015, her next career move seemed obvious—the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar was started by a former Tao of Tea employee. 

Wagner says she’s drawn to tea because of the community it creates. “I would rather drink mediocre tea with good people and share that,” she says, “than use that time to source excellent tea and drink it all by myself.” She loves how once tea is served, time gets stretchy. It gives space for people to relax and open up. Deep conversations flow, connections spark. She calls it steaming open the time-space continuum.  

When tea gatherings became jeopardized during the pandemic, and Twisted Branch shut down for months, Wagner decided to share her ceremonies through Zoom and launched the Twisted Branch Tea Club. 

Participants preorder the tea of the month, which can be picked up at Twisted Branch or shipped to your address. It’s recommended that the ceremony be held in a quiet space, where you can gather around your teaware, log onto a computer, and go through the infusions along with the rest of the club. 

In each session, Wagner walks through the infusions and discusses the tea’s flavor notes and origins. When she began the tastings in February, she had no idea if it would take off, but a passionate group of customers coalesced, eager to jump in. “They’re really great about being inquisitive minds,” says Wagner. “Everyone brings a really different perspective, and the questions are all different angles on the same thing.”

It’s gone so well, in fact, that Wagner isn’t sure she’ll transition off Zoom. Some participants are tuning in from other states, and she doesn’t want to leave them behind. She will also continue to host Sunday Afternoon Tea, a drop-in, in-person event at IX Art Park on the last Sunday of the month. 

Back on the deck of Twisted Branch, five infusions and almost two hours have slipped by. As I leave, I see Wagner pick up the offering cup. She gently pours the tea into the soil of a nearby plant. 

Avoid infusion confusion with these FATQs

What tea should I start with? “Most people have had tea before, and have an idea of what they like or don’t
like,” Wagner says. Let that be your guide. “But,” she adds, “a classic Chinese green tea can be a great place to start.” Try Dragonwell or jasmine pearls in loose leaf form. 

I don’t own a gai-wan or other traditional teaware. It’s not necessary. If you’re using a mug, Wagner suggests putting loose-leaf tea into a steeping basket, so that the leaves can still move around. 

Boiling water, right? Not necessarily. Boiled water is only appropriate for herbal and black teas, whereas green teas don’t need to be brewed hotter than 175 degrees. Experiment with water temperature, and while you’re at it, play around with the amount of tea leaf you use. This is a good time to tap into your intuition!

Everything’s set up, I’m about to pour my first cup…what should I pay attention to? There are five components to traditional tea tasting: Observe the shape of the leaf; smell the aroma of the dry leaf, then the wet leaf; notice the color of the infusion; and finally, taste the flavor itself.

I’m hooked! Where do I find my fellow communi-tea in Charlottesville?  

< The Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar:
teabazaar.com

< Christina Wagner’s website:
theradiantleaf.wordpress.com/about

< Philosopher’s Tea:
philosophers-tea.myshopify.com 

< Farmstead Ferments:
farmsteadferments.com

Categories
Culture

All good

Orion Faruque will celebrate The Good Stuff with a release party at The Southern Café & Music Hall on Saturday. Photo: Tristan Williams.

When Orion Faruque was a child, and adults asked him, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” he remembers thinking, “I kinda just want to sit in my bedroom and play music.” 

Now, at 29, Faruque is a working musician, and also the founder of local recording and production studio RedMusic Productions. Through his solo project, Orion and the Melted Crayons, he’s released singles and played many, many gigs. But when the pandemic hit, Faruque found himself sitting in his bedroom, playing music—it became the perfect environment to write Orion and the Melted Crayon’s debut album, The Good Stuff.

Faruque has experience creating under extreme circumstances. When he left Charlottesville to attend McNally Smith College of Music in Minnesota, he took nothing but a duffel bag and a guitar and slept on the floor of an empty apartment, until a concerned neighbor offered him a mattress. “I was 20 years old and like, ‘this is awesome!’” he laughs. Soon after graduating, he moved to his grandparents’ house near Asheville, North Carolina, to “go live on top of this mountain and study myself as a person and an artist.” He says that “during that time, I wrote something absurd, like 65 songs.” 

These experiences line up with Faruque’s musical philosophy. “I aggressively haven’t given myself the option to do anything other than music,” he says. “I could get another job to support it. But if I do that, I’m not gonna do what I need to do. I need to feel like I’m starving to make music.”

Yet after moving back to Charlottesville in 2018 and jumping into the hectic pace of shows and tours, Faruque started to feel burned out. “You’re playing a bar show out of town, people have no idea who you are, and there’s a bunch of drunk people yelling for you to play some song you don’t know,” he says. “On some level, it’s like, ‘What am I doing?’” 

The pandemic gave Faruque time to reconnect with his music on an intuitive level. “I was just making sounds in my apartment,” he says. “I hear a song in my head, I’m gonna play it. I feel like there’s true beauty there.” A few months into the COVID shutdown, he realized he’d written enough songs to make an album. The Good Stuff will debut on September 3 on Spotify and Bandcamp, with a release party at The Southern Café & Music Hall on September 4.

The album draws upon Appalachian roots, but Faruque also  branches out. “If you take funk and jam band music together, then add the lyrical sensibilities of folk and the colors of jazz,” he says, “it creates a really interesting sound.” On the funky, psychedelic tune “What Is Love,” he plays every instrument, and saxophonist Gina Sobel, Kendall Street Company’s Ryan Wood, Louis Smith, and Brian Roy help out on other tracks.

While musically diverse, the album is centered around one theme: focusing on the good stuff. “E9” is a meditation on what we can learn from the pandemic, while “The Letter” explores Faruque’s grief around losing his dad at 14. Even then, he retains threads of hope. In “The Letter,” he sings: “If it’s raining / why is the sun shining through?” 

With the debut album done, what’s next for The Melted Crayons? “I really hope that I don’t have to make a record like this for a while, just because it was so much work,” Faruque jokes. But that seems unlikely for a musician who doesn’t give himself the option to do anything else. 

Categories
2021 Best of C-VILLE Staff Picks

In a pickle

Photo: Eze Amos

Like chocolate chip cookies and post-it notes, pickleball’s invention was a happy accident. One summer day in 1965, three dads were tasked with entertaining their desperately bored kids. Finding a nearby badminton court but no badminton rackets, they
scrounged up some ping-pong paddles and a plastic ball. Thus, an enduring sport was born. 

Pickleball can be described as a mix of tennis, badminton, and ping-pong, but it has some quirky rules all to itself. Pickleball players serve underhand, with the paddle below the waist at the point of contact. And every self-respecting pickleball player knows you better stay out of the kitchen, aka the “no-volley zone,” where hitting the ball is off-limits. 

While pickleball players are drawn in by the game, they stay for the community, and you’ll find plenty of that in Charlottesville. The Central Virginia Pickleball Club estimates that around 300 locals are picking up the paddle, with more people joining all the time. An aspiring pickleball player has plenty of options. You can play in tennis courts throughout Charlottesville, or use the dedicated pickleball courts at Key Recreation Center, Piedmont Virginia Community College, Greencroft Club, or Boar’s Head Resort. For those who want expertise, there are classes hosted by ACAC, CVPC, or local pickleball coach Jason Grigg.