Author: Mary Shea Watson

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Arts

Takin’ care of backstage business at area music venues

In his role as the general manager at Sprint Pavilion, Kirby Hutto interacts with some of the hottest acts in the music business. Photo by Jen Fariello

If Gary Green does his job well at the Paramount Theater, nobody will know. As the theater’s audio production manager, he analyzes how sound waves produced by artists will be affected by rising temperature and humidity as audience members fill the space. He knows how voices sound in each microphone, and where the Paramount’s resonance frequencies are—these being the frequencies at which objects vibrate.

“[Audience members] only notice when things go wrong,” Green says, citing an experience when a digital soundboard crashed and he almost canceled Clint Black’s show. “They walk into a live concert expecting the sound of the studio. It’s a high mark to reach night after night.”

B.J. Pendleton is another local “sound guy” who determines what audiences hear, primarily for shows at the Jefferson Theater since it reopened in 2009.

“I love mixing shows,” Pendleton says. “I can make or break your show. You guys can practice as much as you want and have great lyrics, but I can throw that out in two seconds.”

Pendleton is joking of course, and says he wouldn’t do something that “horrible.” He first encountered the Charlottesville music scene in the early 2000s when his hip-hop band, Man Mountain Jr., opened for The Hackensaw Boys at a Liberty Hall Pig Picking. He says it was a full departure from The Roots-like vibe Pendleton’s band created. “It was us in the middle of a field playing on a hay trailer, people drinking beer, and a pig,” he says. “I’ve mixed [sound for] The Hackensaw Boys a million times now. It’s funny how it all comes together.”

He also manages international tours for artists including Amos Lee, Robert Glasper and Gregory Porter, while running his music production company, Pendleton Presents. He and his wife have a 9-month-old and 2-year-old. Sometimes, Pendleton says, he likes to sleep.

Kirby Hutto, general manager for the Sprint Pavilion since construction broke ground in 2004, says he can go to almost any show on the East Coast and find someone he knows working backstage. Though Hutto thinks the Pavilion hits a “sweet spot” and can attract a variety of acts, he says the space isn’t always easy for performers to visit.

Mishap stories include a bus driver who drove to Charlotte instead of Charlottesville, a raging alcoholic lead singer, sending a van to Philadelphia to pick up bandmates who missed connecting flights and tending to artists’ stomach bugs.

“We’re a challenge logistically,” says Hutto. “Once [the artists] get out of their trucks and into the venue, we’re going to do everything we can to make it a memorable, favorable experience for them.”

Keeping the artists and the fans happy is a priority for Hutto, whose mishap stories include a bus driver who drove to Charlotte instead of Charlottesville, a raging alcoholic lead singer, sending a van to Philadelphia to pick up bandmates who missed connecting flights and tending to artists’ stomach bugs.

He remembers Jack White refused to have the color red in his dressing room. No red cups, no red decorations, no red anything. When Jack White’s tour arrived, everything red was gone, Hutto says, thanks to the Pavilion’s hospitality director.

“You can’t get drawn into the madness when part of your job is solving that,” Hutto says, crediting the ability to stay cool under pressure and his team’s resourcefulness. “The rest of the stuff can be background noise as long as the artist goes on. …It’s truly an art.”

George Gilliam, general manager for the Southern Café and Music Hall, reviewed one band’s contract that included a request for a Tickle Me Elmo toy. He says strange requests can be a test to make sure venues read artists’ contracts thoroughly. “We did not buy a Tickle Me Elmo,” confirms Gilliam.

Green tells stories of two legendary bands he won’t name, saying one was “not happy” with the Paramount’s soup spoons and showerheads and another recent big-name act threatened the theater’s stage manager. Green says his 20 years of experience teaching Albemarle High School students with oppositional defiant disorder prepared him to deal with artists who are “prone to tantrums” and believe “the world revolves around them.”

Despite the occasional big egos and odd requests, most staffers feel fortunate to be working behind the scenes, where they sometimes meet artists they admire.

Mary Beth Aungier, talent contract administrator for the Lockn’ Festival and venue manager for Infinity Downs Farm, has extensive industry ties through her years as a tour manager. In the ’80s she managed an international tour for Carlene Carter, June Carter Cash’s daughter, and fondly remembers riding shotgun in a red Triumph with Carter and her former husband, Nick Lowe, then meeting Elvis Costello later that evening.

Hutto faced a humbling moment two years ago watching his musical hero Ry Cooder. “It was the most starstruck I’ve ever been,” says Hutto, who was fretting about getting his show poster signed. “I had to leave backstage because I was being too much of a fanboy.”

“Many of these people are pleasant, engaging, wonderful,” says Green. “You quickly become aware that they all sleep, eat and breathe like the rest of us.” After Crosby, Stills & Nash finished their set at the Paramount several years ago, Green says Graham Nash thanked every person on the crew. “We’re the first ones there and the last to leave…saying thank you goes a long way,” he says.

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Arts

Photographer and UVA researcher track bees in “A Ghost in the Making”

Conservation photographer Clay Bolt explores the decline of a rare bee species in his new short documentary, A Ghost in the Making: Searching for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee. The Wild & Scenic Film Festival screens the film at Violet Crown on April 5. Photo by Neil Losin

Photographer Clay Bolt is drawn to species he calls the oddballs and little guys. Working internationally with organizations such as National Geographic and BBC Wildlife, Bolt is a natural history and conservation photographer.

“What sets me apart from a ‘nature photographer’ is that a lot of my work records life cycles and tells stories of the species that I focus on,” Bolt says. He seeks out images and videography that bring attention and protection to the creatures that most people overlook.

The rusty patched bumblebee is Bolt’s focus in A Ghost in the Making: Searching for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee. He wrote, produced and released the short film last June, and it has been featured in environmental film festivals across the country and comes to Violet Crown Cinema on April 5 for the Wild & Scenic Film Festival.

What does a rusty patched bumblebee look like?

A worker has a black head, yellow midsection and a reddish rusty patch on its upper abdomen. Queens are larger and don’t have the reddish patch.

Rusty Patched Bumble Bee (Bombus affinis), female, worker, from Wisconsin. A species that has declined 87% in the past 15 years due primarily to an introduced Eurasian pathogen.
Courtesy claybolt.com

Through visuals such as slow-motion, magnified shots of various pollinators, and research from scientists across the country, Bolt’s documentary explores the rapid decline of the rusty patched bee—once common to the northern Midwest and eastern United States, including Virginia. Over the course of the past decade, the insect disappeared from nearly 90 percent of its historic range.

Bolt found T’ai Roulston, curator for the State Arboretum of Virginia and UVA environmental sciences associate professor, on a “listserv for bee people.” Roulston has studied interactions between insects, plants and pollinators like the rusty patched bumblebee for more than 20 years. He says the decline of this bee can largely be attributed to Nosema bombi, a disease brought to the United States from Europe.

Roulston explains that in the 1980s, two species of North American bees were shipped to Europe to study how to commercialize them for pollinating plants in greenhouses. After undergoing these studies and being exposed to various environments abroad, one species returned to greenhouses in the western United States, and the other returned to greenhouses in the eastern United States.

In the 1990s, the western bee species could no longer be used in greenhouse operations, due to high incidence of Nosema. The eastern species did not seem sensitive to the same disease, and remained in use for pollination.

“We have strong circumstantial evidence that Nosema increased in the wild bee population at the same time that commercial colonies were spreading,” Roulston says. “We’ve been doing surveys for Nosema in my lab in Virginia. We are seeing the pattern of high Nosema in species we consider to be declining,” which include the American bumblebee and its closest relative.

In 2014, Roulston and a team of researchers garnered buzz around the nation when they trapped a rusty patched bumblebee at Sky Meadows State Park in Delaplane, Virginia. It was the first time the bee had been seen in the eastern United States in five years. It was also the first time Roulston saw a rusty patched bumblebee in the wild, though it was postmortem.

“I was very intrigued by the fact that one individual bee suddenly popped up where it hadn’t been seen in a long time,” says Bolt. “It was an amazing little breadcrumb.”

Neil Losin, another producer of “A Ghost in the Making,” knew Roulston from spending time with him at Blandy Experimental Farm, a UVA research facility in the Shenandoah Valley, and home of the state arboretum. Ten years after Losin studied there, he, Bolt and the production crew came to Blandy to interview Roulston and film scenes.

“To go out into the field with T’ai and follow him and see his process, and how diligently he searches, was really amazing,” Bolt says. “It gives you hope that there are people out there who understand why—with all their heart—these species need to be protected.”

In January, the rusty patched became the first bumblebee in the continental United States to be listed under the Endangered Species Act, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Shortly after, the Trump administration postponed new regulations from federal agencies for at least 60 days, including the ESA listing of the rusty patched.

Last week, in a decision Bolt calls a “miracle,” the listing became official.

“These are the moments that make all the hours of work and worry worthwhile,” Bolt says. “Now the real work begins.”

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Arts

The Front Porch celebrates inclusivity at new location

At The Front Porch’s new home on Water Street, founder and executive director Emily Morrison plans to expand programs, partnerships and concerts that welcome musicians and artists of all genres. Photo by Amy Jackson

The Front Porch’s Emily Morrison wants artists of all backgrounds to find peace at the roots music school she founded in 2015. With help from friends, Morrison began the school in a back room in her home and soon moved into a space at Mountaintop Montessori. Last June the nonprofit moved into the old Michie Theater space on Water Street East. Morrison says the school offers a service she couldn’t find locally as a burgeoning banjo player—a space to host jams, performances and lessons in genres ranging from bluegrass to African dance.

“The essence of what we’re trying to do at The Front Porch is encourage people to sit together and share inspiration, stories from their background and what moves them—to bring the songs they want to learn to the table and play with other people,” she says.

Since childhood, Morrison has felt drawn to the Appalachian sound and language of roots music. That’s not what excites her most about music-making, though—it’s the merging and blending of genres that happens over time as cultural pasts converge.

“There’s a source of music here that’s worth exploring,” Morrison says. “But, there are many other cultural groups with musical histories that are valid, important and should be celebrated.”

Upcoming at The Front Porch

Friday 3/3

An Evening with the Darrell Rose Power Trio

Saturday 3/4

Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer concert and workshops

Monday 3/6

Songwriting class with Jesse Harper of Love Canon

Thursday 3/9

West African dance class

Friday 3/10

Starry Mountain Singers

Saturday 3/11

Sunny Mountain Serenaders

Morrison sees an increasing need for artists to have a peaceful place to communicate through the language of art, especially since words in today’s world can be so divisive, she says. Devon Sproule, a guitar and songwriting teacher who recently joined The Front Porch, describes her methodology as “musical mentoring.” Sproule sees music as therapeutic, and says she helps students process life’s joys and pains through creative writing.

“The Front Porch’s path is the same as that: It’s about connecting people and people enjoying music for the experience, not for competition,” Sproule says.

Pete Vigour has taught music for 30 years, tours internationally and teaches clawhammer banjo, fiddle, mandolin and guitar at The Front Porch.

“The philosophy to be inclusive of people of different backgrounds, ages and socio-economic background is quite exciting,” Vigour says.

To make The Front Porch more inclusive and accessible, executive director Morrison and board chair Angel Gunn plan to increase funding for student scholarships and strengthen partnerships with organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters and International Neighbors, a nonprofit providing support for refugees and immigrants.

A number of “champions,” Gunn says, have been instrumental in the move to the downtown location. They began full-scale renovations by creating a large multi-purpose room that connects to classrooms and installed new dance floors, though Gunn says there’s still much to be done.

“We were given a raw space and we’re so grateful for it, but it was a puppet theater,” Gunn says. “There was a little stage and miniature bench seats for 4-year-olds. …We said, ‘Okay, we can fit 10 people in this space.’” Gunn says acoustic improvements and other renovations will continue in order to match the caliber of The Front Porch’s performers and teachers.

Fitting the bill for that quality are Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, who perform and host ukulele and guitar workshops. After meeting in 1980 at a Toronto folk festival, and receiving mentorship from musicians such as Pete Seeger and Tom Paxton, Fink and Marxer went on to play at hundreds of festivals and garnered two Grammys for their style of music that they call “well-rounded Americana.” The duo married in 2012, “pretty much as soon as we could,” Fink says. At their wedding, Fink, Marxer and Paxton performed Paxton’s “You Are Love” together, and Marxer says there was not one dry eye in the room.

“Roots music and activism have always gone hand in hand,” Fink says. “What we do as artists is distill the world’s complication and make it feel like we can do something positive with it—to make good music that inspires people.”

Their new album, Get Up and Do Right, aligns with The Front Porch’s mission to celebrate cultural exchange and tradition. They look forward to performing and teaching in Charlottesville, where Marxer says she sees a tremendous amount of talent and musicality.

“The list is long in how we’ve received support,” says Morrison. “It’s really been a beautiful experience.”

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Arts

Folk musician Claire Hitchins finds her voice on These Bodies

Inspired by Appalachian music and the mountains, Claire Hitchins’ folk melodies tell stories of nature, faith, peace and resistance. She performs with her bandmates Alex Bingham and Evan Ringel at C’ville Coffee on Wednesday. Photo by Paul Robert Davis

One year ago, Claire Hitchins took a leap of faith. While volunteering on the West Coast, Hitchins sat in her room and recorded her music for the first time, with the help of an old laptop and GarageBand. Within a few months, the award-winning podcast “On Being” featured Hitchins and her music, and her SoundCloud listenership grew into the thousands.

“Strangers heard my music and I got such amazing feedback,” Hitchins says. “To put something out into the world and have all this energy come back, it got me thinking, ‘Well, maybe there’s something to this.’”

After a five-hour jam session with her producer and current bassist, Alex Bingham, Hitchins entertained an idea she once thought impossible. She came back to the East Coast, raised more than $13,000 through Kickstarter, ditched GarageBand and made her first professional album, These Bodies.

Before the surreal experience of producing her album in the same studio as Lucinda Williams and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Hitchins had stepped into a formal studio only once. She could count on one hand how many times she performed her music in front of an audience. Though she grew up in Roanoke playing cello, participating in musicals and strumming the guitar and banjo, Hitchins is still getting used to calling herself a folk musician, instrumentalist and singer-songwriter.

“I remember feeling like I was never going to use the word ‘y’all,’” Hitchins says. “It wasn’t until I left Roanoke that I fully embraced the y’all.”

When she was younger, Hitchins spent many Friday nights at what she calls “the place to be”—a country store’s weekly jamboree in nearby Floyd. She remembers bands playing bluegrass and gospel music, while spectators slapped and stomped their feet.

“That was the first place I think I really experienced that richness of culture that is so distinctively Appalachian,” Hitchins says. “Neither of my parents are from the South. …My sense of belonging to this place of Appalachia didn’t feel like a birthright.”

Music and the mountains helped Hitchins come to terms with the complex history of rural Appalachia and the inheritance of a legacy that she found difficult to comprehend. Amid guitar and banjo chords that bounce from variation to variation, the deep pluck of a bass or electric guitar and the soft crescendo of a trombone accompanying Hitchins’ powerful voice, she envelops listeners in her vision of an Appalachia that is peaceful, harmonic and bold all at once.

Nature writers such as Mary Oliver also helped form Hitchins’ “inner landscape.” While studying at UVA, Hitchins initially thought she would be an environmental science major. But, after enrolling in her first course, she realized she would rather be in the outdoors than studying it.

Hitchins grew up steeped not only in the sounds and surroundings of Appalachia, but the language of sacred stories found in Judeo-Christian narratives, as well. Never seeking to exclude, impose or write liturgical music, Hitchins picks themes that resonate with a variety of listeners and that people can relate to regardless of their religious language. “Oh Moses, well he never saw the promised land / And Martin only saw it in his dream / But when I hear the thunder on the mountain / then I can almost hear that mighty stream,” Hitchins sings in “When It Rains,” inviting her listeners to what she refers to as a “holy space of being present.”

“There’s something about music that feels inherently sacred to me,” Hitchins says. “There is a certain reverence that I bring to my music that is informed by my faith.”

Hitchins also finds herself informed by artists like Mavis Staples and other musicians she identifies as courageous voices for justice during social movements like the fight for civil rights.

“Powerful women that have sung truth to power in different ways keep me going at times when it feels frivolous to be making music, especially when there are all these pressing needs,” Hitchins says. “These Bodies is not specifically political or topical, but I hope that there is a kernel of my desire for a more just and peaceful world.”

In addition to kicking off a tour in six states to promote These Bodies, Hitchins has been advocating across the country for that idea. Inspired by the Sioux Nation’s “sacred relationship with the natural world,” Hitchins traveled to Standing Rock Indian Reservation to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. She also attended the inauguration of President Donald Trump and sang with a protest group all day—even as police dragged them away.

As she wades into new waters, Hitchins finds sustenance in Charlottesville’s supportive music and arts community. The first time she shared her music publicly was at The Garage during her final year at UVA, just as she was about to leave Charlottesville. She says she didn’t anticipate another show, then last fall Hitchins celebrated her new album with a release show at The Haven and started a New City Arts Initiative residency.

Now, she’s preparing for another homecoming. Next Wednesday, February 15, at 7pm, Hitchins and bandmates Bingham and Evan Ringle will perform at C’ville Coffee, with Erin Lunsford opening.

“People have been so generous of their time and willing to share what they’ve learned and give good advice,” Hitchins says. “It feels like I’m in the right place.”

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Local radio stations amp up the holiday content

Jeff Sweatman at 106.1 The Corner tries to program slightly outside of the traditional holiday songs. Photo by Amy Jackson

On December 24, 1906, Reginald Fessenden transmitted the first wireless public radio broadcast. It included Christmas songs, stories and, in Fessenden’s words, his own “not very good singing.” Today’s listeners have many—usually very good—derivatives of Fessenden’s holiday work, and here in Charlottesville the programming at local FM radio stations is no exception.

“Our perspective is that there are some really cool, different and newer takes on Christmas classics,” says Jeff Sweatman, the 106.1 The Corner program director and brand manager. His current favorite is a holiday album released last year by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. After Jones’ recent passing from pancreatic cancer, he says the album has stayed front-of-mind.

He also references tunes like Fleming and John’s “Winter Wonderland,” which mixes in “Misty Mountain Hop” by Led Zeppelin, and Spiraling’s “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” featuring bites from The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.”

Sweatman says The Corner tries to be the antidote to sister station Z95.1, which plays Christmas classics 24 hours a day starting on Black Friday. He tells a story of airing Kasey Musgraves’ “Present Without a Bow” featuring Leon Bridges right after Halloween, which sparked a number of angry social media posts—some in all caps—from Corner listeners.

“I think of people stuck in their office listening to [holiday] music all day,” Sweatman says. “Even when we go all Christmas, we mix it up. There’s a couple of good Hanukkah ones in there, too.”

The Corner will “go all Christmas” on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day until noon, playing a mix of listener favorites such as Barenaked Ladies, Ingrid Michaelson, Sara Bareilles and The Ramones.

Mark Keefe, program director and general manager of WNRN 91.9, has a similar perspective and tries to “not overwhelm people with [holiday music].” What the station is really good at “is not making people who really don’t want to hear that all the time mad,” says Keefe. “You’re not going to get dogs barking ‘Jingle Bells’ here.”

From Christmas Eve through Christmas Day, each of WNRN’s specialty shows will present its own holiday program. One seasonal special that airs this month features tunes recorded in-house by Rob Cheetham, Lowland Hum and The Hill and Wood. “That concert was really cool,” Keefe says. “Having some good local takes on holiday tunes [makes it] pretty special.”

Keefe says the station will cap off 2016 with the year’s top 100 songs, as chosen by listeners. Voting via the WNRN website closes Friday, December 23, at 11:59pm and listeners can catch 2014 through 2016’s top tunes from December 28 to December 30.

“You get the cornucopia of holiday programming in Charlottesville,” says Josh Jackson, program director for public radio networks WVTF 89.7 and WVTW 88.5. Jackson says his listeners enjoy programs such as King’s College’s live broadcast from “A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols,” which airs on WVTF from 10am to noon on Christmas Eve, and the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day broadcast from 11am to 1pm, featuring live performances of waltzes, polkas and other classical tunes.

On Christmas Day for the first time, WVTW will present “Tinsel Tales,” stories on the meaning of Christmas and other holiday stories, as told by famous public radio voices such as Audie Cornish, Nina Totenberg and David Sedaris.

Peter Jones, WTJU 91.1’s folk director and volunteer coordinator for the past 20 years, looks forward to similar storytelling programs. Jones oversees live music at WTJU, and says the station’s 200-plus volunteers and hosts bring something new to their programs for the season.

Jones also hosts WTJU’s “Folk and Beyond” on Thursdays from 4 to 6pm, and “Tell Us a Tale” on Sundays from noon to 2pm, which he says is the only children’s radio program in central Virginia. This Sunday, at noon, Jones says his listeners will hear Hanukkah stories.

“We just hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season,” WVTF’s Jackson says. “We love our listeners and we are a community.”

Tuned in to the holidays

WVTW Radio IQ 88.5

“Tinsel Tales,” holiday stories
from Audie Cornish, David Sedaris and more

Sunday, December 25, noon to 3pm

WVTF 89.7

“A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols,” live from King’s College

Saturday, December 24, 10am to noon

“New Year’s Day live from Vienna,” presented by the Vienna Philharmonic

Sunday, January 1, 11am to 1pm

WTJU 91.1

“Tell Us a Tale,” stories of Hanukkah

Sunday, December 25, noon to 2pm

WNRN 91.9

“Top 100 songs of 2014 to 2016”

Wednesday, December 28, to Friday, December 30

Seasonal music now through December 25

The Corner 106.1

Seasonal music now through December 25

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Arts

Marine Special Ops vet makes tailoring his new mission

Charlottesville-based military veteran Derek Questell is raising the bar on men’s fashion with his designer suit business, Tailored Quest. Publicity photo

Men’s fashion and the military have a lot in common, if you ask Derek Questell. After serving in the Marines for 10 years and four deployments, Questell now tailors custom clothing from his Charlottesville home, calling the enterprise Tailored Quest.

“It’s in my blood, my Italian heritage,” says Questell. “My dad gave me my first suit when I was 15. He said, ‘Son, always have a well-tailored suit. It’ll never fail you.’” Questell, who grew up on the coast of North Carolina, tells stories of watching his father build guitars for 45 years and cooking alongside his mother, whom he worried about upsetting when he enlisted two years after the Iraq invasion—a “no-brainer,” he says.

After joining the service, he worked his way up the ranks from a diesel mechanic, to being recruited, trained and sent around the world as a Marine Special Operations Raider. He served in the first peacetime mission set in Indonesian embassies once combat operations ended in Afghanistan in 2013. That experience motivated Questell to pursue a career change.

“I learned that my younger guys on the team did not own suits,” he says. “They had them, but they fit really poorly and it wasn’t a good representation for our organization.”

Notwithstanding the 1932 Singer sewing machine Questell inherited from a great aunt, he appears (wait for it…) tailor-made for his profession. It’s hard not to miss Questell—dressed in a made-to-measure navy and pale-blue twill striped, European-cut suit with a paisley lining, matching trousers with Italian suspenders, a custom navy striped shirt, a vintage hand-knitted red silk tie and one of his favorite pairs of shoes: oxblood double monk straps. He says people often stop him on the street and ask what he does, to which he smiles and hands them a business card.

Questell wants to inspire his brothers still in the military and show that it’s “not that hard to start your own company.” He went back to school, finished his undergraduate degree and is now engaged to a fellow veteran. They’re planning a June wedding at Keswick Vineyards, where Questell will showcase his work. He’s a strong believer in versatility—that what you wear on perhaps the most photographed day of your life can be worn day-to-day, too.

“How much cooler would it be to get a nice suit that you could get married in, take with you and write your own tailored quest?” Questell asks.

Questell says he doesn’t settle until he gets that “wow” from clients, calling it a game-changer when “guys transform into what they want to be.” He incorporates stylistic elements and materials from his world travels, such as cashmere pashminas he bought in Afghanistan.

Questell focuses on the educational aspects of men’s fashion—modeling his mission to educate and build clients’ confidence in themselves after what he learned in the Marines.

“I take that from my own Special Operations model of train, assist and advise,” he says. “So taking that with style, I’ll teach you the tools to go to your wardrobe, put something together and know that it goes [together].”

Looking to grow his business, Questell now offers clients the opportunity to gift custom tailoring sessions. He has his eye on a showroom space, tapping into the wedding industry and building his sales team.

He doesn’t mind getting several text messages a day from clients or friends asking him how they look—to which Questell responds, “You got it, brother. Keep on.”

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Artisans team up to craft Monolith’s handmade knives

Zack Worrell (pictured) works with Alan Bates and Nick Watson to create handmade knives in his home studio. Their open house is Saturday from 9am to 1pm at The Bridge. Photo by Brianna Larocco

Zack Worrell and his team at Monolith Knives are carving out a name for themselves in the handmade knives market. From a studio on Worrell’s Ivy family farm, once owned by Meriwether Lewis, Worrell, Alan Bates and Nick Watson create culinary and field knives. Recently, they have been “breathing life” into folding knives, as Bates describes the process.

“We have trained artists, we have trained mechanics, and we have people that are coming from all these different backgrounds in this little shop,” Worrell says. “It really is a Jeffersonian story, because we’re doing things the way he probably would have liked to have seen them done.”

The lifelong desire to work with their hands led Bates, a woodworker with a background in custom high-end carpentry, and Watson, a sculptor and metalworker who recently finished an Aunspaugh Fellowship at UVA, to join Monolith Studio.

“When I first told my parents I was making knives, they were like, ‘Oh, knives are scary,’” Bates says. “So I bring a knife over and they’re wincing. A knife is a weapon to them, but I make kitchen knives. So they’re coming around to it.”

The artistry makes it easy to come around to knives as an “object of beauty,” as Monolith’s business manager and Worrell’s wife, Carrie, says. Each piece has “soul,” according to Worrell and Bates. Knives and cutting boards are currently available for purchase on Monolith’s website and at Timbercreek Market, and Zack hopes to add more retail locations.

“There aren’t many handmade kitchen knives out there,” Watson says. “Ours are special and so far different from something that you pick up at Bed Bath & Beyond. They create your dinner—what your family gathers around every day.”

In addition to providing lifetime sharpening and repairs for every tool they create, Worrell, Bates and Watson carefully curate each knife’s materials. One blade incorporates reclaimed steel from an old Mustang. Another custom handle features walnut from a client’s farm in Kentucky, and several future knives will include wood from crotches, the part of the tree where branches meet and wood compresses. A gentleman who goes by “Wild Man” recently provided the trio with the crotches in exchange for a Monolith knife.

“The idea of taking metal and putting it in the fire, smashing it and doing this and that to it is super cool to me,” says Worrell. “[Knife- making] feels like you’re going on this exploration of material. You’re bringing design along the way for functionality and aesthetic, but at the end of the day, it has to work.”

Dave Matthews recently came by the studio to work with the guys on a custom mushroom harvesting knife for his wife—featuring hair from his family’s hogs. Worrell says Matthews was involved in the process from the start.

“[Matthews] wasn’t like, ‘Hey, call me when it’s done or send it to my secretary,’” Worrell says. “He went out and cut the hair off the hog.”

Though Monolith has already garnered awards and national attention while working with clients ranging from celebrities to professional chefs, the guys continue to operate as a close-knit team—embracing the constructive feedback and “show-and-tell” moments fostered in a studio environment.

“Almost every knife has been worked on in some way or another by all of us,” Worrell says. “There isn’t one guy that makes all the knives, one guy that’s on the computer and one guy sweeping the floor. We’re working in a capacity.”

It’s this vision of a business that builds partnerships and celebrates creativity and resourcefulness that Worrell calls his “childhood dream.”

“What I feel like we’re trying to build here is a little bit of our own community and culture,” he says.

On Saturday at The Bridge PAI, visitors can watch these knife-makers and other local artisans at work—“smashing steel and making a scene,” as Worrell says—at an event titled “Sharp & Shiny Things: A Metal Crafters Open House.”

Worrell says his experience as co-founder of The Bridge is what drove him to knife-making. “My experience working with artists and learning about working with artists is what gave me the confidence to say, ‘I want to go be an artist.’ I feel very lucky to have found [Bates] and [Watson].”

Carrie Worrell, chair of The Bridge’s board of directors, sees the event as serving the nonprofit’s mission to bridge diverse communities through the arts.

“[Knife-making] is an art form happening right here in Charlottesville,” she says. “People need to know about it and people cruising around town should feel free to walk up and find out what a UVA graduate and two Charlottesville guys learned to do. They created a company to make [knives]. It’s pretty cool.”

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Arts

Creative community finds support at The Farm House

The Farm House provides studio workspace in a historic 1925 farmhouse where artists and community members meet, create and collaborate. Photo by Lauren Stonestreet

For Lauren and Stephen Stonestreet, good hospitality runs in the family. As cicadas hum and the neighborhood sounds of 10th and Page reach the porch of their 1925 farmhouse on a Sunday afternoon, the siblings share stories of traveling missionaries and artists visiting their grandparents’ home near Charleston, West Virginia.

They say these memories of building community, breaking bread together, storytelling and creating art and beauty through respite laid the foundation for creating The Farm House in March 2015. At its core, The Farm House provides studios and workspaces for artists, entrepreneurs and community leaders in the Charlottesville area. Last year, 26 dancers, musicians, painters, designers, photographers and writers honed their craft in the provided spaces.

“We’re a home for artists, entrepreneurs and community leaders,” co-founder and director Lauren says. “We’re furthering people in their various gifts and callings, tending to the growth of the city.”

“It’s a space for the community, by the community,” co-curator and artist-in-residence Stephen says. “This is so much more than a co-working space. This is a place to find family and be encouraged in your art and also in your personal life.”

As artists themselves, Stephen and Lauren see The Farm House as a means to erase the loneliness, isolation and lack of energy that impacts creativity. Stephen is a filmmaker and art director for Stonestreet Creative and Lauren is a photographer, musician and dancer, who spends much of her time in The Farm House mentoring, choreographing and teaching.

“It’s a focused space where it’s quiet and steady,” says Lauren. “A lot of people have said this space has been very peaceful for them and they find rest when they’re working. Out of that place, I think you create your best work.”

The home is open from 8am-8pm during the week and hosts a weekly coffee hour, community art hours, monthly workshops and potluck dinners. Performances are often open to the public and take place on a makeshift stage near a separate tiny home studio where visiting artists can reside, write, paint, teach and find refuge for a few weeks.

Almost every furnishing in the home tells a story. Stephen points out a mustard-colored sofa from their grandparents’ home. And underneath a mirror from a courthouse in Albemarle County, Lauren flips through a welcome book bearing the signature of nearly every visitor to The Farm House.

Lauren and Stephen serve monthly dinners on a piece of furniture that is especially important to them—a long dark-stained, handmade pine table built and assembled in the kitchen by their friend, Richard Vo, while he applied for medical residency and needed a creative outlet.

“[Visitors] can bring a salad or something to drink or whatever, so they can feel like they’re coming to receive,” Lauren says. “That is a huge part again, in building a home.”

She and Stephen see each dinner as an opportunity to bring people together who may never have crossed paths.

“I’ve seen full-blown projects that are launching this fall that began at the dinner table,” Lauren says. “Just by people bringing some type of intentional question, or asking how you are really doing, or going around the table and sharing as little or as much as you want.”

In addition to providing space for inspiration and community building, The Farm House seeks to “connect the dots,” as Stephen says, by bringing people of different faiths, art backgrounds, ethnicities and generations together. Lauren and Stephen attribute their deep appreciation for imagination, wonder and beauty to growing up in a faith-based home. It’s a faith that they say evolved over time to focus on people, community and the present moment.

“Our desire is—through our personal lives and our faith—to create spaces of peace and to encourage people on their walk,” Stephen says. “There’s an image of beauty that we’re missing in our culture, too. And there’s a sacredness to that, so I think that’s the root behind our desire to build this space. And it comes through our faith, too. There’s no shying behind that.”

He and Lauren both emphasize that The Farm House is neutral, safe and, above all, meant for artists.

“Eternity is not later,” says Stephen. “It’s now. And we’re sharing in it through love, joy and creating.”

Since March, the pair have accepted 14 new members and are looking for more who are interested in a six-month commitment.

“It’s about tending to the individual, the artists, their art and their craft and asking, ‘What do you need?’ We figure out that they need more skills in an area and we provide that,” Lauren says. “It’s curating what needs to happen when, and asking artists, ‘What things do you need before you even start here?’”

For Lauren and Stephen, community comes over competition. “A lot of artists are just trying to make it,” Stephen says. “And we’re trying to further them. That’s the focus here. It’s not just space: In giving you receive; in receiving you give.”

Contact Mary Shea Valliant at arts@c-ville.com.

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Gina Sobel unpacks stories of travel in new album

Jazz musician Gina Sobel comes home to release her new album, World’s Getting Loud, at the Tea Bazaar on Friday at 9pm. “For this [album], I really wanted to capture this vibe I had in my head,” she says. “I wanted to portray that. I think the phrase everyone uses is, ‘We use the studio as an instrument,’ you know?” Publicity photo

The sun casts honey-colored hues across White Hall’s stretch of the Blue Ridge Mountains as Gina Sobel plays a gold Stratocaster at Restoration’s summer concert series. It’s too hot to play inside the restaurant, she says, as muddied jazz and rock ‘n’ roll reverberate across the restaurant’s patio.

A native of Northern Virginia and a William & Mary alumna, Sobel started on the flute and credits her dad, a guitarist in a jazz trio, as her major musical inspiration.

“From a really young age, I was interested in music, and music was everywhere, all the time,” she says.

She started reading charts and sitting in with her dad’s trio until she was told, “You can’t play with us anymore unless you start improvising.” And that was the push that Sobel needed. “I started playing and [discovered] I love improvisation—it’s such a huge part of my musical experience,” she says.

Sobel stuck with the flute and later picked up saxophone and guitar. She performs in more than a dozen bands, including rock group The Mighty Fine, a new jazz improv, funk-based project called Choose Your Own Adventure that Sobel calls a collective, and Wytold, an ensemble featuring electric cello and live looping.

“I write a lot of jazz, which has in the past been very separate,” she says. “But with Choose Your Own Adventure and The Mighty Fine and these duo gigs, I’m slowly starting to bring those together and get the improvising in and get the interesting chord changes in and blend it all. I’m really focusing on grooving and making cool musical experiences.”

On her new album, World’s Getting Loud, Sobel draws inspiration from touring and traveling. Just 30 minutes long, Sobel kept the album short to drive home her travel theme, calling it a “sonic realm” that expresses the subjective feelings her travels evoked, rather than the objective sounds of places she visited.

It’s about loneliness and separation, excitement and curiosity, and in the song “Natchitoches,” for example, the weariness and beauty in driving 10 hours across California. Sobel recalls catching the flu in India and writing the album’s title track between fever dreams, fitful naps in her sleeping bag, unsteady walks in the Himalayan town of McLeod Ganj and eating bowls of Tibetan noodle soup.

“It’s the idea—and this happens for everyone—that we travel because we’re unsatisfied or we’re searching or trying to figure something out—and [traveling] helps to a certain extent,” she says. “But we still bring ourselves with it. …Sometimes it’s the realization that when you’re going to new places, you still have the same things going on.”

Translating the experience of travel into the language of music didn’t happen immediately for Sobel. “I had been dreaming of this,” she says. “I got back and had this electric [guitar] that I bought and was scared to perform on. I was like, ‘I’m not Jimi Hendrix.’ It’s gold. It’s a gold Stratocaster.”

In the end, Sobel’s confidence emerged through the artistic vision she’d founded. “I’m primarily a rhythm player on guitar, but I knew I really wanted to do this,” she says. “I had this image, or, I don’t know what you’d call it, I guess a soundscape in my head that I really wanted to put out there.”

Helping create those soundscapes is Lance Koehler, owner of Richmond-based Minimum Wage Recording. They produced the album in two and a half days, collaging layer upon layer of Sobel’s melodic instrumental and vocal tracks. “He’s the drummer for No BS! Brass Band, really cool,” says Sobel. “Huge ears. He hears amazing things, not technically, not physically, but you know, he just hears stuff.”

Sobel is no stranger to the studio. “This is my 11th or 12th album. I’ve done a lot of studio time, but this was something that was new and really exciting,” she says. “I knew what I wanted it to sound like and [Lance] helped me put it out there.”

Catch Sobel’s new sounds at her Tea Bazaar release show this Friday at 9pm, where she shares the bill with Marian McLaughlin’s folk trio. Fresh off her West Coast tour, Sobel plans to stick around in her home state to promote the new album.

“I left thinking that there are all these amazing places and I’ve been in Virginia almost all my life, you know, it would be cool to be out there and I fell in love with a lot of places,” Sobel says. “But, I came back and was like, ‘Oh wow. This place is one of the most amazing places in the world.’ I love Charlottesville. It’s really good to be back.”