Author: Shea Gibbs

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Living

Whole animal butcher shop aims to increase accessibility of local food

Matt Greene of JM Stock Provisions & Supply, a local butcher shop that works with nearby farmers. Photo: Martyn Kyle/Pernmoot Photography

Ben Rindner is standing over one side of a freshly slaughtered pig. In front of him, running left to right along the butcher block at JM Stock Provisions & Supply, is the animal’s bisected backbone. Below that are loins and chops, shoulders and shanks, meaty muscles tucked into the carcass’s cross-section among organs, bones, ligaments, and fat. On either side of Rindner, the pig’s hooves jut off the edge of the block.

Rindner is ready, knife in hand, to break down a whole animal for the second time in his life. It’s quite a change in scenery for a guy who less than a year ago was on the fast-track as a reality television producer.

“I just got tired of Hollywood,” Rindner said.

The accomplished young producer found his new calling when he stumbled across a Kickstarter campaign for a whole animal butcher shop in Charlottesville. According to the pitch on the crowdfunding site, JM Stock founders James Lum and Matthew Greene were launching a store to act as a retail outlet for local farmers. They wanted to take the middle men out of the meat supply chain and make the whole distribution process more transparent.

Rindner took to the philosophy, and after a conversation with Lum and Greene that further sold him on the movement, he picked up and left L.A. to start an apprenticeship at Charlottesville’s newest butcher shop.

Rindner, Lum, and Greene aren’t the only ones who have bought into the model. For years, people relied solely on farmer’s markets for locally sourced proteins. Now, shops providing farms a storefront operated by skilled artisans who know how to highlight their product are popping up like weeds in a cow patch. According to Marissa Guggiana, founder of sustainable butchery trade group The Butcher’s Guild, about 200 butcher shops nationwide now work with whole animals. She guesses roughly 100 of those are strictly whole-animal focused.

“There are new shops opening every week,” Guggiana said. “All the evidence I have is anecdotal, but I hear from butchers that are opening or in the process of opening at least once a week.”

For JM Stock’s part, Lum and Greene have been dealing exclusively with local farm Timbercreek Organics since starting operations on October 11. They said it’s places like Timbercreek that brought them to Charlottesville in the first place.

“The local agriculture is kind of unmatched,” Lum said. “I don’t even know if people here realize how good it is.”

Every Monday, Timbercreek owners Zachary and Sara Miller deliver their “weekly produce” to the shop—whole cows, pigs, and chickens. The JM Stock butchers then set to breaking the animals down, stacking sides up on the large central butcher block visible from everywhere on the shop floor, and carving away.

According to Greene, who’s been in the meat processing game for about five years and the restaurant biz for at least twice that long, the process of breaking down a whole animal actually requires little cutting. It’s mostly about pulling muscles apart and using a knife tip to free them. (There is, however, a saw involved.)

Whatever the process takes, for Timbercreek, it’s a welcome service.

“There’s a big hole in animal processing for farmers,” Zachary Miller said. “We work with a wholesale processor, but its butchering leaves something to be desired. This really puts the polish on the finished product that we were missing.”

So that’s the end of the story, right? Happy farmers, skilled butchers, healthy consumers? For a while, it seemed so. The local food movement was so highly regarded, no one really questioned it. Food critics became bobble-headed yes-men. Media members laid down their cynicism. Right-wing hunter/gatherer types and left-wing food snobs rubbed elbows at the dinner table. But there was at least one ruffled feather. The food was expensive. Didn’t it seem excessive to pay two times more for a locally raised chicken than one of Frank Perdue’s finest?

For many city-dwellers, local food is indeed nothing but a luxury item, something left for the upper crust’s plate or reserved only for special occasions. Mass produced grub is simply more economical. The question for JM Stock is: Does it have to be that way?

“There is a stigma behind it,” Greene said. “Part of that is the price point, but also part of it is that it is sort of marketed as this luxury, this bourgeois gourmet kind of thing. James and I are not fancy.”

Greene admits JM Stock isn’t going to undersell the national grocers anytime soon, but he insists the store has options for every pocketbook. If you can’t afford New York strip one week, he’s confident he can find you a good cut from the leg, or that he can load you up with enough ground beef to satisfy your taste. Or maybe you’d be tempted by one of JM Stock’s no-frills prepared foods, like funky sausages with pulverized Funyuns, meatloaf with mashed potatoes, or homemade bologna.

And Greene said he and Lum can do one more thing to make whole animal butchery more accessible. If they’re going to send you away with a cut you’ve never heard of, they’ll give you tips on how to prepare it. After all, if you get home and can’t make the meat taste good, you’ll be unlikely to shop local in the future. And that, for Greene, defeats the purpose.

“Buying stuff from Virginia should become effortless for the regular consumer,” he said. “At a certain point, it will become more cost effective, and people will become more and more aware of what they’re eating.”

Ben Rindner picked up and moved across the country to work as an apprentice at JM Stock Provisions & Supply, a local butcher shop that works with nearby farmers.

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Arts

Easy Star Records helps U.S. reggae step out of Jamaican shadow

The Green (L to R: Zion Thompson, Jordan Espinoza, Caleb Keolanui, JP Kennedy, Ikaika Antone, Brad “BW” Watanabe) is leading the way for a U.S. reggae breakthrough, thanks to the stalwarts at Easy Star Records.

If Lem Oppenheimer is at all worried about perpetuating the stereotypes that come with being in the reggae business, he didn’t show it when he walked into a Belmont coffee shop for an interview on October 18.

Tall and lanky with close-cropped hair, Oppenheimer clutched a handful of CDs produced by his record label, Easy Star Records, and took off light-tinted aviator style sunglasses as he stepped across the La Taza dining room. On his shirt was the name of a popular indie reggae band: 10Ft. Ganja Plant.

It’s easy to disregard the reggae industry as some dope-smoking college kid’s passing interest—the musical equivalent of black light posters and lava lamps. But best believe: Oppenheimer and Easy Star take the music very seriously. After more than 15 years in the business, the Charlottesville and New York-based label has become one of the major players in a rapidly growing genre.

“U.S. reggae is kind of at a tipping point,” said Oppenheimer, who co-founded Easy Star in New York shortly before moving to Charlottesville in December 1997. “For the first time, U.S. reggae artists are using their own voice rather than imitating someone else.”

The U.S. reggae movement arguably got to jammin’ about a decade ago on the strength of an Easy Star release, Dub Side of the Moon, a rearrangement of the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon, which has sold about 200,000 copies worldwide since its release in 2003. The record, performed by the label’s house band the Easy Star All-Stars, was the first big hit for Easy Star, and it tipped off a whole new audience that there was more to reggae than old Bob Marley tunes.

Today, Easy Star produces records for about a half dozen acts that fall under the vague heading of “progressive reggae.” There’s Passafire, a rock-reggae outfit with a decidedly 311-like sound. There’s John Brown’s Body, which manages to feel both traditional and futuristic by infusing classic reggae rhythms with plenty of keyboards and guitar pedals. There’s Cas Haley, roughly resembling Sublime’s Bradley Nowell, and adding an indie singer-songwriter vibe to the modern reggae movement.

Then there is the one that got away.

“We actually turned down Soja’s first demo,” Oppenheimer said of the Virginia-based reggae band that recently played the nTelos Wireless Pavilion. “It is what it is. At the time, if I had know they would become as popular as they are, would I have wanted to be involved with that? Sure.”

The most popular act produced by Easy Star at the moment is The Green, a quintet from Hawaii that’ll skank into the Southern on November 6 with a smooth, radio-ready sound. Indeed, by debuting at number one on the Billboard reggae chart and hitting number 77 on the top 200 chart with its latest LP Hawai’i ‘13, The Green has delivered Easy Star its biggest opening week for an album ever.

“They’re kind of like a reggae boy band,” Oppenheimer said. “They’re on the pop end of the spectrum, and they have these five guys with different personalities all blending voices.”

“Boy band” may capture The Green’s wide appeal, but Oppenheimer admitted it is probably selling the group short. Sure, there are tracks that sound like sappy teenage love songs ( “Never Before”), but there’s a dark edginess to other tunes (“Good Vibe Killah”), and Marley’s influence is never far away.

“Gonna make it real nice for the people upstairs/make it real nice for people everywhere,” they rap in “Something About It.” “The young man said, never give up the fight/never give up the fight, and you know it’s true.”

Reggae probably won’t—and shouldn’t—ever get too far from its roots in the Caribbean. But Oppenheimer said the genre is as popular in the U.S. now as it’s ever been, and that’s a sentiment echoed by Charlottesville-based Red Light Management’s Elliott Harrington who manages Soja and has worked with Easy Star over the years.

“In the past decade or so, it has been growing, and I think different walks of life are starting to appreciate this somewhat young genre,” Harrington said. “It is becoming less and less of a niche genre and more and more of a genre, just like hip-hop, rock, and folk.”

What’s the ceiling for reggae’s popularity? The “sky,” according to Harrington. If that’s so, Easy Star Records and Oppenheimer certainly stand to be among those pushing the ascent. According to The Green’s co-manager Seth Herman, the label has always done things the right way, with a combination of high profile releases and interesting independent artists that give them credibility.

“When you see artists returning to a label again and again, it’s a good show of strength,” said Herman, who also operates Rootfire, a collective of music industry professionals dedicated to growing reggae. “I think you can look at the history of record labels and draw the conclusion that not every label is good on its word. Easy Star saw the bigger picture and never tried to make a quick buck.”

Justin Pietro, a Charlottesville-based reggae producer who goes by the name of Dub Architect and oversees Easy Star’s online presence, said one of the things that sets the label apart is its commitment to producing physical albums and pressing vinyl. As Oppenheimer stood up to leave La Taza after an hour of chatting about reggae, presumably headed home to his wife and two daughters in Woolen Mills, he started to pass along his stack of CDs to spread his love of reggae. Then he stopped himself.

“Do you have any way to listen to these?” he asked. He shook his head. Better not to take chances. “I’ll just put them on SoundCloud.”

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Living

Here today, gone tamale: Eppie’s delivers with weekly Mexican classic

Chicken and cheese tamales may stray from the southern comfort cuisine at Eppie’s, but private chef Ana whips up nearly 100 of them every week using a classic Mexican recipe passed down from her grandmother. Photo: Elli Williams

I’ll admit it. I don’t love tamales. I do love the idea of tamales. Believe me, the first time I was at a hipster bar in Chicago’s Bucktown and a Mexican woman walked in carrying a cooler full of hot masa dough surprises, I was first in line, lack of FDA-oversight be damned.

But the reality of the meal never lives up to my expectations. Masa, the dough that comprises a tamale, is by nature bland—it’s just corn flour, water, a touch of oil or fat, and seasonings—so the ingredients used to fill the mixture have to carry the team. And if I suspect even for a second that my tamale purveyor has pushed the dough-to-filling ratio too high, it’s hasta la vista, baby.

So when I heard about the popularity of the chicken and cheese tamales at Eppie’s on the Downtown Mall, I was intrigued, if not inspired. What made people line up for these things week after week? What were they doing on the menu in the first place?

It turns out if you want the story of Eppie’s tamales, you’ve got some work to do. Dan Epstein, who owns the joint with his brother, is one busy dude. He works a full-time job in addition to running the restaurant. He has a young daughter and a second kid on the way. He seems to be in meetings constantly. As for Epstein’s brother Charles, he’s a silent partner in the business. And “silent partner” isn’t just a clever name.

Then there’s Ana, the private chef who worked full-time at Eppie’s years ago but now comes in only two or three days a week to make the tamales. It’s easy enough to find her—she preps ingredients every Monday afternoon behind the Eppie’s counter and mixes dough and fills cornhusks every Tuesday. But she’s shy and speaks almost no English, so for a non-Spanish speaker like me, communicating with her is like taking a test to see how much awkwardness you can handle.

Fortunately, another Eppie’s employee offered to translate last Tuesday afternoon when I asked Ana about her signature dish. He said Ana told him the tamale recipe was her grandmother’s, and I can confirm hearing something that sounded like “abuela.” Beyond that, Ana wasn’t giving away too many tamale secrets, but she did say her dough includes minced jalapeños, tomatoes, and onion. As for the mole that goes in the chicken tamales? It’s “a lot of ingredients,” according to my faithful translator.

Epstein, who took a break from running around like a one-armed biscuit maker to save me from embarrassing myself in front of Ana, shed a little more light on Charlottesville’s best known tamales. When Eppie’s opened, he knew he wanted to do daily specials to give people a reason to come in every day of the week. It was an idea he borrowed from a deli in D.C. that drew long lines for its “meatloaf Thursdays.” The only question was what kind of dishes Eppie’s would feature.

“The tamales were a suggestion of Ana’s,” Epstein said. “She made them for herself one day and brought them in. She said Eppie’s should serve tamales, and I was like, yeah, if you want to make them, let’s try ’em.”

It turned out to be a good decision. Despite the tamales being a bit of an outlier on the menu, they’re probably the most popular special, Epstein said.

“How do I measure that? The amount of wrath I would feel from the customers if we said, ‘no tamales,’” he said.

Unfortunately, “no tamales” is something Eppie’s has to say from time to time; when something that takes three days to make runs out, there’s no making more.

The whole process starts by soaking the corn husks that hold the tamales in place during cooking, and slow simmering chocolate, cinnamon, roasted nuts, chili peppers, and even some animal crackers for the mole.

“When Ana first gave me the list of ingredients for the mole, I was like, huh?” Epstein said.

Next, Ana slices the onions, deseeds the jalapeños, and prepares a bowl of cheddar to assemble the vegetarian option. Once she’s cooked the chicken directly in the mole and mixed the dough, she wraps everything up in a tasty little package. By the end of the day each Tuesday, the whole batch of chicken and cheese tamales is stacked in a pan, placed in a fridge to cool, and ready to be steamed for 30-45 minutes the next day. Epstein said his line cooks have started doing one batch in the morning for lunch and another in the afternoon so the dinner crowd isn’t disappointed.

The question is, can Eppie’s keep us tamale skeptics from being disappointed? I wouldn’t call myself a full convert, but there’s a lot to enjoy in the effort. The cheese version is slightly more interesting for someone who doesn’t love masa dough itself, as the crunch of the veggies takes away from the density of the dish. The chicken tamales come across a bit plain, but a side of the intense mole, with its smokiness and nuanced sweetness, gives them a boost. Don’t go overboard with the sauce, though; it’s flavorful enough to drown out the rest of your meal. If you’re into heat, reach for the Cholula or Sriracha on every table at Eppie’s to bring it. The jalapeños in the cheese tamales are completely neutered by deseeding, and the mole is mild.

One might wonder why a restaurant that primarily  excels at southern comfort food—perfectly roasted chicken, ham “biscuits” (country ham on pumpkin bread), and downhome sides like collard greens and mashed potatoes—would even mess with a Mexican standard like the tamale. Epstein just shrugs.

“It doesn’t really fit,” he admitted. “If we struggle with anything, it’s answering the question, ‘What kind of restaurant are we?’ It’s not that we have something for everyone, but we do have a lot of good stuff.”

 

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Arts

Interview: Dr. Dog’s dueling songwriters trade indie rock anthems

Dr. Dog brings its scrappy, gimmick-free rock to The Jefferson Theater on Wednesday November 6. “You don’t have to pander and whip your dick out or anything,” said Toby Leaman (third from left) about treating the audience to a good time.

A lot of married couples could learn a thing or two from Dr. Dog’s Toby Leaman and Scott McMicken. The singer-songwriters have been making music together since eighth grade more than 20 years ago.

The secret to staying together as long as they have? It’s the rock ‘n’ roll equivalent of never going to bed angry, according to Leaman, who recently spoke with C-VILLE Weekly to preview the band’s November 6 show at The Jefferson Theater.

On top of providing some dynamite marriage counseling in the phone interview, Leaman talked about Dr. Dog’s new record B-Room, band members lost and gained, and staying relevant.

C-VILLE Weekly: Dr. Dog has always hit on a lot of different styles, but the latest record seems to break new ground, like the doo-wop elements I hear in the opening track.

Toby Leaman: It’s usually not a conscious effort on our part to say this is the style we’re going to do. It’s usually a song-by-song thing, and as we get better at making records and better at playing, we’re better able to execute when a song needs to work a certain way.

The band’s music has always seemed divided between you and Scott. Is that a reality?

It’s pretty much whoever is singing wrote the song, but this record was a little different. We had more help from the rest of the band. And that was a conscious decision. The bulk of the songs are usually done before we bring them to the studio or anyone hears them—either Scott or I have done a demo and it is pretty well fleshed out. Then Scott in particular wanted to try to write more with the band for this record. And it worked great. We have always been really collaborative in the recording process. Scott and I aren’t like tyrants or anything. If people have an idea, we’ll try it out.

You guys have always sequenced your tracks back and forth between your songs and Scott’s songs. Why do you do it that way?

We did that on the first record because we really wanted to establish two lead singers. We have talked about all this shit so much. We talked about it again on this record, asking “is this the right move?” I don’t know. Maybe we’re just old fuddy-duddies, but I feel like the sequencing of our records has always been good. So until we hit a wall where that is impossible, that’s the way we’ll do it.

You and Scott have been together since eighth grade. How do you keep things fresh?

It’s never really been problem. He and I write similarly—and dissimilarly—enough to where we just feed off one another. We don’t write together, but we’ve been writing beside each other for 21 years. I guess it is just a game of one-upmanship. I hear something he’s done and think, “I need to up my game,” and the same goes with him. It has certainly made it so we are never in a rut. We both just enjoy songwriting, too.

So there are never any moments where you think about breaking up or going on to do solo stuff?

Yeah, of course. There has been a lot of that. It is always like mid-record, too, where I am just like, “I don’t even like this band. This is horrible.” But it’s just a day. There has never been any prolonged period of that kind of stuff. We don’t let bullshit simmer in this band. If anyone has a problem, it gets dealt with.

So what happened with former band member Juston Stens, who’s gone on to have some success as a front man himself?

It was a long time coming. He was unhappy, and if somebody is unhappy and they start emanating unhappiness, nobody is happy. And then when you don’t show up for a whole tour, that’s a big no-no. I don’t know what his motivations were. I really don’t.

So how is the current lineup of the band getting on together?

This tour is going great. We’re doing an open tour for the first time in four or five years. It’s cool going back in that world where you are only playing 45 minutes and dealing with a crowd that by and large has no idea who you are. The name of the game is to go out there and blow these people’s minds. That attitude I really like. There are also all the luxuries of a really cush tour. We are going to start our headlining tour in November.

What does Dimitri Manos, who joined the band in 2010, bring to the lineup?

We called him in as a last minute tour replacement for Juston Stens. After that, we got Eric Slick, who is a better fit as a drummer, but we loved having Dimitri in the band so much we created this sixth man role where he is doing acoustic and percussion and he has this whole noise generator thing that he’s created.

You don’t have a bunch of guys in pink bunny suits at your live shows, so what do you do to make sure people have a good time?

If you’re up there and you’re a good solid rock band doing your thing and people are there to see rock music, the deal is sealed. You don’t have to pander and whip your dick out or anything.

I feel like whenever I hear something about Dr. Dog, your hometown of Philadelphia gets attached to it. Why do you think that is?

I don’t know, but that is a reality and I like it. It is an old working class town, so maybe it’s sort of like, “Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog: Unhip band from unhip city.”

Seems like lots of people think you’re hip these days. What do you do to make sure it stays that way?

Our fans are really good, and we are a good live band, so that helps. Staying relevant is definitely important. There is nothing worse than being a completely irrelevant band. We’re not the most adventurous band, we’re not trying to chase down the newest sound. We just try to do what we do.

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Arts

The Cold War Kids refine their spin on indie rock

None of the three original members, Nathan Willett, bassist Matt Maust, or drummer Matt Aveiro, had toured seriously before they started the Cold War Kids as a hobby. In a way, Willett said they weren’t even trying to make anything happen when all of a sudden they were producing EPs and touring professionally.

The Cold War Kids are kind of like leftovers from a good restaurant in the back of your fridge. You remember them being tasty, but you forget to eat them for a while, and then you start to wonder if they’re any good anymore.

If only old leftovers could produce an album like the Kids’ latest, Dear Miss Lonelyhearts, a blues- and soul-inflected rocker highlighted by glimpses of catchy jangle pop.

“We’re still finding out what we do well,” said Nathan Willett, the Cold War Kids’ front man and principal songwriter who’ll lead his band into The Jefferson Theater on October 29. “After the first couple of records, we realized there were a lot of other bluesy rock bands we had a lot in common with. We decided to kind of take a different turn.”

So how did the old college friends from California become leftovers in the first place? It all started when “Hang Me Up to Dry,” the first single from the 2006 LP Robbers and Cowards, cracked the Billboard Top 200 and popped up on radio stations across the country. The successful single was riding a wave of critical acclaim for the Kids’ three previously released EPs, and the quartet looked like they’d be the next underground band to make it big.

Then they got put in a doggie bag by the tastemakers at notorious indie website Pitchfork in the form of a scathing album review.

“Pitchfork certainly did backlash on us,” Willett said. “That became something we had to deal with. It has become part of the story of the band.”

In addition to calling the Cold War Kids derivative and lyrically heavy-handed, the website all but pigeonholed the band as a Christian rock group based on some of the imagery Willett used in Robbers and Cowards. It was a particularly harsh blow for the college literature major who has a self-professed “love of words and poetry.”

Pitchfork hasn’t changed its tune on the Cold War Kids, and they’d almost certainly disagree that the band has gone in a different direction from more popular blues-rock outfits like The Black Keys. But the Kids added some new firepower two years ago from former Modest Mouse guitarist Dann Gallucci, and the band’s arrow seems to be pointed up again. The opening single from Dear Miss Lonelyhearts, “Miracle Mile,” charted as high as number 22 on Billboard’s alternative chart.

“Miracle Mile” is a good opener, and one of the poppiest numbers on the new album, but the best example of songwriting on Dear Miss Lonelyhearts is likely “Tuxedos,” a desperate yarn about wedding-goers that puts to bed some of the criticism of Willett’s lyrical shortcomings.

“I think about eyes that watch you/I think about changes I’ve made,” he wails. “I think about all this fancy food going down the drain.”

Willett still prickles about the Pitchfork backlash and has grown beyond tired of the criticism of his lyrics and suggestion that the Cold War Kids are pushing some kind of Christian agenda. But that doesn’t mean he plans to change the things that led to the notion in the first place—the band’s soulful side (Willett said he tries to emulate singers like Nina Simone) or its transcendent lyrics.

“There are spiritual elements to our songs,” he said. “There is a longing, a soul searching happening. They’re not just songs about finding love.”

Willett said most Cold War Kids songs start with a riff or meandering jam and grow from there, with the lyrics being added last “most of the time.” He thinks the most successful numbers are inflected with a little bit of each band members’ personality.

“We like to take different pieces of music that everyone has touched in some way,” he said. “Then I will come in and do my stuff, write all the lyrics and do what I do.”

It’s an organic songwriting process for an organic band. None of the three original members, Willett, bassist Matt Maust, or drummer Matt Aveiro, had toured seriously before they started the Cold War Kids as a hobby. In a way, Willett said they weren’t even trying to make anything happen when all of a sudden they were producing EPs and touring professionally.

The group is rounded out on the road by multi-instrumentalist Matthew Schwartz and has always taken a DIY approach to promoting itself, as well.

“Since the beginning of the band, we have always done our own stuff,” Willett said. “Our bass player Matt Maust does all the album artwork, and he has been super active online in the past.”

More recently, Willett said the Kids have veered away from hitting the Internet hard for promotional purposes. Now, it’s just about touring and putting a high-energy live show in front of new audiences.

“Touring is a tough way to do it,” he said. “You can’t just do it constantly.”

Fortunately, blues rock has proven to be successful in the studio and in front of an audience, exemplified by musicians like Jack White, who Willett says has been hugely influential.

“It is amazing music,” Willett said. “It is music that, in some ways, is just more universal than anything else.”

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Arts

Interview: Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison finds his voice

Scott Hutchison (center) leads Frightened Rabbit, currently touring on Pedestrian Verse, its first album release on Atlantic Records. The band made the leap to the major label in 2010 after three albums with indie label FatCat.

When Scott Hutchison started writing songs, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be heard. He says he intentionally mumbled early in his career so people wouldn’t understand his lyrics. His band’s name, Frightened Rabbit, was taken from a nickname his mom gave him because he was such a shy kid.

What a difference a bit of critical acclaim makes. After the Scottish rock quintet’s second LP, The Midnight Organ Fight, made a splash in the states, Hutchison realized he had an audience. The next effort, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, was successful enough to earn the band a deal with a major record label.

Now, touring in support of Frightened Rabbit’s latest album, Pedestrian Verse, Hutchison took some time to tell C-VILLE Weekly about the ride he’s been on and what the band will bring on October 14 when they perform at the Jefferson as well as an in-studio appearance at WNRN at 3pm that day. (updated 10/14 with link to in-studio)

C-VILLE Weekly: Pedestrian Verse is your first major label release. How has that changed things?

Scott Hutchison: It changed things in a way I didn’t expect. When we started making the record, I had the same major label fears anyone might have—they would be heavy handed and say, “you need a single and you need to write a certain way.” What actually happened was we got more freedom and more resources and more time than we’ve ever had to write a record. It ended up being a far more creatively rich process than we’d ever had before. There were times when I was ready for a fight with them, but it never happened.

Did you try to pick a fight at least?

A couple of times when I was wasted, yes, but I was always wrong.

It does seem like you guys have a more major label sound now.

I think that’s the direction we were headed anyway. There wasn’t any kind of compromising on this record. It is a realization of a sound that we have been working toward over the course of three records. It’s just come from experience and becoming better at songwriting and performing. For me, it is a more refined record than we have ever made.

You guys are playing bigger venues in the States these days. What’s that been like?

The U.S. audience has been great. We just finished two weeks with The National, and large venues don’t really daunt us as much as they did before. We felt ready. I think our music fits that setting well. You have 45 minutes to convince lots of skeptical people they should check out your band after they leave the venue, and we felt that happen.

How do you keep from getting burned out?

Part of the learning curve is to keep taking each day as it is and not think about the next. If you think about the string of dates you have in front of you too much, it is going to give you a panic attack. If you focus on one show at a time, it allows you to make sure every show is the best it can be.

Is there any baggage to being a British band touring the U.S.?

I think there is a difference between being a British band and a Scottish band in the States. Especially early on in our career, we were more popular here than the U.K. There is a tradition of Scottish guitar music that was started by Mogwai and Teenage Fanclub. There is also affection for Scottish people in general, and I think the audience enjoys the sound of the Scottish accent. I can certainly see us continuing to grow in the U.S., and part of the reason for that is our Scottishness.

I once heard you guys described as Scottish emo. Do you relate to that? 

There are a couple of ways to interpret the word emo. From years back when emo meant bands like Death Cab for Cutie and Jimmy Eat World, that is something I can associate with. But the word now has come to mean something entirely different, and I don’t associate with it as much. Now, it kind of means all black clothes and skinny jeans and generic guitar playing.

Midnight Organ Fight is typically referred to as a “breakup album.” How has your songwriting progressed since then?

When I was writing Midnight Organ Fight, we didn’t have an audience and I was unaware anyone would hear it anyway, so I wrote in a personal manner without censoring myself. When it came out and got attention, I thought, “holy shit, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that.” I censored myself on the follow-up, and I think that was a mistake. So for this one I decided not to censor myself. On this record, I was trying to write more about other people’s lives. In the past, I have written about my own life a hell of a lot, so it was a challenge to see if I could write in a different way.

Most of your songs are pretty serious, but there is also a cheekiness to them, right?

That is something that wasn’t even conscious really, but it is something of a Scottishness or British kind of sensibility to treat disaster and heartache and angst with a sense of humor. That is the way I treat it in life as well, for better or worse.

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Arts

The many sides of Aoife O’Donovan’s talent

Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan has found success with Goat Rodeo Sessions, Crooked Still, Sometymes Why, and Alison Krauss. She makes her solo mark on Saturday at The Festy Experience.

Aoife O’Donovan (pronounced ee-fah) has girl-next-door good looks, which makes it all the more shocking when she breaks into the opening lines of “Too Repressed,” a song she wrote for her folk trio Sometymes Why.

“I wanna fuck you/But I’m too repressed/ I wanna suck you/but I can’t take off my dress,” she breathes on the 2006 track.

Shocking as it may be, even the reasoning O’Donovan gives for writing the song has one foot in the wholesome camp. “I was encouraged by my parents to do the song. They were like, ‘this is the feminist anthem,’” she said in a September 25 phone interview. “There are so few songs like that from the female perspective. There are all these old songs about sex or drinking or beating up a woman, and it’s like, ‘oh, it’s no big deal.’”

Several months ago, O’Donovan stepped from behind the cover of Sometymes Why and her successful alternative bluegrass project Crooked Still to deliver her first solo record, Fossils. When she plays The Festy Experience in Nelson County on October 12, she’ll be primarily promoting that effort, which she said has been a long time in the making.

“I think [Crooked Still] will reconvene in the next couple of years and do some festivals, but in the meantime, I’m really going to tour behind Fossils and get these songs out there,” O’Donovan said. “I’m just hitting the road—that’s what you have to do.”

Fossils is a bit of a break from the more strictly folk and alt-bluegrass projects O’Donovan’s done in the past. She said growing up in the Northeast, her parents exposed her to the folk musicians of the ’60s—Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell—the usual suspects. And while she fell in love with the tradition established by the singer-songwriters of that era, she doesn’t want her music to be pigeonholed.

“I don’t feel tied down to any one style,” she said. “For Crooked Still, I think it is cool for the band to just sound like the band. But Fossils is just music—it is whatever you call it. It is Americana. It is folk. But there is a problem with people putting it in one box.”

According to O’Donovan, that means “throwing the pedal steel curveball” in places and bringing a decidedly rock ‘n’ roll sound to tracks like “Beekeeper.” She thinks that’s just the kind of music that will work particularly well at a multi-genre festival like The Festy Experience. “If you are a real music fan, you aren’t a genre fan,” O’Donovan said. “You love music and you’re open.”

O’Donovan’s love of music in all its forms blossomed while studying at the New England Conservatory of Music, the oldest independent music school in the U.S. and alma mater to John Medeski and Coretta Scott King, among other famous alumni. O’Donovan said she figured out early on that she eventually wanted to pursue a solo singing-songwriting career, but her first gig out of school was with Crooked Still, where she was the principal songwriter and lead singer. From 2001-2008, the band toured tirelessly and produced five well-received albums.

One of Crooked Still’s recording sessions brought O’Donovan into intimate contact with Charlottesville, the childhood home of bandmate Greg Liszt (now in The Deadly Gentlemen).

“We made our album Some Strange Country in Dave Matthews’ studio,” she said. “We were there during the crazy snowstorm of 2009. We were literally snowed in at Haunted Hollow. It was a blast.”

O’Donovan’s side projects and collaborations over the years have gone beyond her stints playing occasional shows with Sometymes Why. In 2010, Alison Krauss caught wind of a song O’Donovan had written, “Lay My Burden Down,” and recorded it for her 2011 album Paper Airplane. More recently, O’Donovan was a vocalist for the Grammy-winning Goat Rodeo Sessions, which includes Yo-Yo Ma on cello, as well as Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan. The group produced a studio album in late 2011 and went on a two-week, eight-city tour in support of the record after it won a Grammy for Best Folk Album in February. O’Donovan pointed to the band’s performance at the Hollywood Bowl as the most memorable experience on the tour. “It was amazing to be in that band, and it was an absolute joy to collaborate with Yo-Yo,” she said. “Hopefully we will continue that project and do something again in the future.”

With the Goat Rodeo Sessions tour recently behind her, now could be the perfect time for O’Donovan to promote her new record, which itself pulls out some big guns to ensure success. The LP starts off with—what else—O’Donovan’s own take on “Lay My Burden Down,” a nice canvas for her breathy, Norah Jones-esque voice. Producer Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists) is along for the ride throughout the LP and the result is a well-produced, refined record. And while some have questioned Fossils for its lack of edge, O’Donovan says the tracks are on the whole true to herself. “When people have seen my live show, they know I am very much how I am,” she said. “I don’t have a difference in personality between my stage persona and offstage.”

Hopefully her parents approve.

Categories
Living

Holy crepe! The Flat still sets the street food standard

Lauren McRaven’s Downtown creperie will soon expand to a new food truck. Photo: Elli Williams

Crepes are dainty, right? They’re carefully plated with drizzles. They’re dusted with powdered sugar. They’re prized for being as thin as the chef can make them.

They’re about as dangerous as Rachael Ray’s housecat.

Right?

Not Downtown at The Flat. These are street food crepes. These are flour-based vehicles for stuffing delicious ingredients in your maw. These are soak-through-the-wrapper flavor bombs. Hell, these things were inspired by a visit to Scotland.

“I would make crepes at home growing up,” Flat owner Lauren McRaven said. “Then I was in Edinburgh and there were these stands there. They were open ’til 3am, quick and easy, and more interesting than a hamburger.”

McRaven thought a crepe stand might do well in Charlottesville, and in 2005, she opened The Flat. She and a handful of employees have been wrapping sweet and savory crepes to go ever since.

“Everything is made to order,” she said. “We try and do as many local ingredients as we can. We have some pre-set combinations that we know are good, and people can build their own.”

The Flat is the type of place that inspired the phrase “hole in the wall.” It’s no bigger than a walk-in closet and feels crowded for just two people. But that’s really all the space the joint needs. In the morning before opening, McRaven and another employee elbow past each other as they cook local meats on a hot plate and grill up veggies on the same cast iron cooker they use to make the crepes. They mix the batter a day in advance to allow the “glutens to set up” and let the air settle out of the mixture, and everything is prepped and ready to go when the restaurant opens at 11am.

“A lot of places start with a pre-made mix, which we don’t do,” McRaven said. “Other places will make the crepes and stack them and reheat them.”

McRaven says her most popular crepe is the Southside of Heaven, named, as many of her crepes are, for a musician who has played The Jefferson Theater (in this case Ryan Bingham). This singer-songwriter’s delight is a fistful of Rock Barn sausage, grilled onions, spinach, cheddar, and chevre cheese. When it all hits the cooktop, it looks like it wouldn’t hurt for a sauce to bring it together, but after plenty of time on the heat to melt the cheddar and a couple of folds, it’s a cohesive package. A Hot Pocket with class.

The Southside eats like a Scottish post-pub feast. The cheese mixture (which ends up tasting more like gooey American after it goes molten) and rendered sausage could use a few more veggies to balance their richness, but the Rock Barn pork is a well-cast star. This is sausage that doesn’t hide behind big spices or herbs—it’s just straight up sausagey. If you’re into something lighter, McRaven recommends the Temptation of Adam, an apple and brie mixture that pairs well with Rock Barn ham. And that’s before you even get to the list of dessert crepes.

As for the crepes themselves, the standard version is made with both whole wheat and white flour, and The Flat offers a gluten-free and vegan take, as well. While the crepes don’t bring much flavor on their own, they’re an unobtrusive and nicely-textured wrap. Certainly they’re superior to the moo shu pancake. Could they someday be the equal of the ubiquitous flour tortilla?

“I don’t know, maybe in Charlottesville,” McRaven said. “We’ve been here eight years now, and we are pretty well known.”

To speed the crepe’s ascent, McRaven is in the process of launching a Flat food truck. It’s a move that makes a lot of sense given the restaurant’s current setup is actually smaller than what you’d find in a mobile kitchen.

A couple words of advice to make sure you get the most out of your first trip to The Flat. One, it’s cash only, so don’t walk up there waving plastic. Two, the menu is written in chalk and can get hard to read, so ask for a recommendation or have a quick look at the menu online before you go. And three, call ahead to place your order during prime mealtimes, or prepare to be patient. By the looks of the line outside The Flat on a Saturday morning, the tortilla could be in trouble.

Categories
Arts

Fact-checking with Del the Funky Homosapian

The hip-hop supergroup Deltron 3030 (with Del the Funky Homosapian center) hits the Jefferson on Friday. Image: Darren Samuelson

Of all the music Del the Funky Homosapien has made since his first record dropped in 1991, he’s probably best known for a rap he wrote in less than an hour for the Gorillaz.

The group never intended “Clint Eastwood,” a platinum track on their self-titled debut album, to include Del at all. Fortunately his association with Dan the Automator got him a shot at re-writing the song’s lyrics after another rapper botched them. The rest is pop culture history.

Over the past two decades, Del has released ten solo albums and done countless collaborations. His latest, the second record for hip-hop supergroup Deltron 3030, is a concept album set in the distant future. In it Del, producer Dan the Automator, and DJ Kid Koala blast through time and space to vanquish foes and save the world. In an interview before the group’s October 11 show at the Jefferson, the 41-year-old hip-hop artist cleared up a few misunderstandings about his past and dropped hints about what’s next.

Let’s check a few facts. Your Wikipedia page says you stopped working with Ice Cube in the early ‘90s because you weren’t pleased with the limited musical range of your first album.

That’s not exactly true. The reason I stopped working with him is because I didn’t want to be seen as Cube’s little cousin who didn’t have anything else to offer. I had other things musically and lyrically I wanted to express, but there wasn’t anything wrong with the first album. I’m still cool with Cube. I talked to him not long ago

The page indicates you have friction with Elektra records—you broke from them on bad terms, they released a greatest hits album without your consent, etc.

I have very little problem with Elektra records. They were changing their staff around, so people I was working with before weren’t there anymore. My attitude probably wasn’t the nicest at the time. I was a kid. They dropped me, but I don’t have any problems with Elektra or Dante Ross, who signed me. It was just an unfortunate situation.

It says you weren’t the first choice to do the verses on the Gorillaz first record and you were basically brought in to fix them.

Me and Dan the Automator were finishing up the first Deltron 3030 album, and Dan was simultaneously working on the Gorillaz project. He had the song “Clint Eastwood,” and it had another vocalist, maybe two, but he didn’t like it. He figured, “You’re dope, you’re talented at writing raps, you can write a rap in like 30 minutes I bet.” I wanted to go home. But that’s what I did, basically. I had just studied this book called How to Write a Hit Song, and I used the information in that book to write that song.

What was in the book?

The first thing it said was above all else, you have to strive to be original. That made me take it seriously. I was like, “I knew it, I knew these fools out here copying everybody, I knew that wasn’t the way.” There were things like writing to the melody, knowing that the music is going to supercede your lyrics no matter how dope you think you are.

Wikipedia says your mom gave you that book, so you gave her your plaque after the song went platinum?

It was my birthday, and I’m an avid reader, so my mom got me a gift certificate for Barnes and Noble and we went in there. I saw that book, and I was like laughing at it. But secretly I was thinking, “If I’m laughing at it, the joke’s probably on me.” I bought the book, and surprisingly it made sense. Then I gave my mom that plaque, but she gave it back to me ‘cause she thought it was ugly.

It seems like collaborations like your work with the Gorillaz have been important over the course of your career.

Me and Ladybug Mecca (formerly of Digable Planets) are working on something right now. I like working with people. I like talking to people. I like getting people’s point of view on things. If I think you’re dope, whatever you can do to stimulate some imagination or creativity, I’m down for it. Sometimes you get bored just creating things on your own. I get paid to do this, but when it comes down to it, I do this for fun.

Do you think we might see you do anything more with the Gorillaz in the future?

I was never really a part of the Gorillaz. I was the hired help, so that’s not really on the horizon. The main thing I’m working on is the Be Intellectual Project with Mecca. I also got a mixtape based on Frank Zappa that is coming out.

Frank Zappa? Seriously?

I’m into all kinds of music, but nothing really spoke to me like hip-hop. It’s street music.

How has the process of “doing hip hop” changed for you over the years?

I tend to focus more on the production than the lyrics. The lyrics are so advanced that the average person can’t really keep up anyway. I do play around with new ways to say things. The Be Intellectual Project comes at it a totally different way. It’s dissonant. It’s an attack. It’s beat oriented. It’s anti-melody. But it’s not madness without a purpose.

You’ve told a lot of stories about phonies and people you don’t like over the years. Why does so much of your writing come back to that?

I look at myself as somebody that does satire. If you know Zappa’s work, it’s kind of parallel to that. He looks at society in general and just points things out. He might play a character in a song to get his point across. That is kind of what I do. Whatever it takes to get my point across. When talking about something sensibly doesn’t work, most of the time I got to humiliate somebody. I put that mirror up to their face. Then you get their attention.

What does Dan the Automator bring to the studio, and what does the Deltron 3030 live show take the form of?

Dan is not the type of producer that tries to be overbearing. He tries to make you look better. He doesn’t sit there and tell me how to do my lyrics, and I don’t try to tell him how to do his music. He also has a lot of resources. With the guest spots on this album, I’m like, “how did you do this?” He’s like, “I’m the Automator.” For the live show, we have a full band because Dan wants a full band.

Years ago, most hip-hop acts didn’t use live bands. Why do you suppose everyone has gone to that?

I’m not saying this is why we do it, but I would imagine it’s because you can’t get in the big festivals unless you got a live band. You can’t get on TV unless you have a live band. Some people are just not going to want to see you unless it’s more than just you walking back and forth with a microphone in your hand. For some people, that is not a show.

You’ve experimented a lot with selling albums on a “pay what you want” basis, with extras offered if you pay more. How has that worked out for you? 

It’s a little income coming in here and there that I don’t have to worry about, but I’m not going to say it made me hella bread like that. One time someone paid like $1,000, and we flew them out to produce a song for them. At first I was like, “is you crazy?” But there are some people out there who have millions and they want to floss some real money.

Categories
News

Friday night lights: Monticello hosts Charlottesville in a crosstown football rivalry with a bright future

Photo: Jack Looney

Tom Harrison looks like the type of guy football players tease in high school: bespectacled, maybe 160 pounds soaking wet. But as a part-time physics and math teacher at Monticello High School, he showed up for the school’s game last Friday as a sign of support for the players and new coach Jeff Woody, with whom he had a particularly productive conversation a few months back.

“The coach came to me at the beginning of the year and said, ‘If you have any problems with any of my players, come talk to me,’” Harrison said. “He meant it.”

Harrison had been told MHS was a new football powerhouse, and he thought the Mustangs’ homecoming game against rival Charlottesville High School on October 4 would be a good chance to see three student athletes he teaches in action.

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Photo: Jack Looney.

The 2007 AA Division 3 Virginia State Champion, MHS turned in two impressive winning seasons and reached the state quarterfinal game in 2012 under its previous head coach Rodney Redd. When Redd left at the end of last season to pursue a college coaching gig at Virginia State, the school hired Woody, a proven winner who took home the back-to-back state championships at Brookville High School outside Lynchburg.

This year, Woody’s working with 16 returning starters from the 2012 team, and the Mustangs are running hard again. The squad jumped out to a fast 4-0 start before playing host to CHS, and there is talk of the team competing for another state title.

Harrison said he was excited to see what his students and the rest of the team could do against the 2-2 CHS Black Knights, but there was one thing dampening his excitement: Both his children are CHS graduates.

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Photo: Jack Looney.

In the end, Harrison rooted for his employer rather than his kids’ alma mater. But it’s those types of conflicts that make a game like MHS-CHS more than just a game, according to CHS Head Coach Eric Sherry.

“Once the lights hit on Friday, I don’t have to motivate the kids for the Monticello game,” Sherry said. “The student body has a big rivalry with Monticello, because these kids live close by.”

On paper, the game set up to be a bit of a mismatch. How would CHS defend two MHS running backs averaging nearly 100 yards per game? How would they handle the size of MHS’s receivers? And how would they handle being the road team on homecoming night against their crosstown rivals?

Maybe, just maybe, the Black Knights could do what they did last year, when they came out of nowhere to beat the bigger and stronger Mustangs. Maybe they could feed off the rivalry, and play spoiler two years in a row.

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Photo: Jack Looney.

“Sometimes in these rivalry games, the emotion seems to be more intense, and momentum plays a big factor,” Woody said. “At the same time, these guys know it is going to take a full 48 minutes of attention.”

The clock started ticking when the ref’s whistle blew. “High school football is pretty simple,” said one of the referees milling around and chatting with the other zebras before the game.”The smaller the town, the bigger it is,” he said. “It’s a community event.”

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Photo: Jack Looney.

That would put a game at Monticello High School somewhere about the middle of the pack in terms of popularity. But tell that to the tailgaters sprinkled throughout the school’s parking lot by 6pm before the homecoming tilt, the streams of cars pulling up to drop kids off for their Friday night out, or the group of prep football buffs chatting field-side before kickoff.

Charlottesville High School Head Coach Eric Sherry also seems to have missed the memo. He was all business as he led his team into the visitors’ locker room around 6:15pm. When he told his boys to focus and keep the noise down, he did not say it nicely.

“When I came [to CHS in 2011], the culture of football was down,” he said. “The kids weren’t putting forth the effort required to become winners. I am very happy with the progress.”

Sherry’s only problem? The horde of black-jerseyed teenagers who came marching down the middle of the MHS parking lot around 6:45pm, molded football cleats clicking in time, laser-focused looks in their eyes.

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Photo: Jack Looney.

MHS jumped out to a quick lead over the Black Knights in the first half of the rivalry game, but a scrappy performance by the CHS defensive line and a key turnover late in the half left the team with momentum and a trimmed 27-10 deficit going into the locker room. It was a steep hole to climb out of on the road, but the underdog was still in the game.

The homecoming halftime brought its challenges for both teams. A handful of Mustangs were on the homecoming court and never made it off the field, posing for photos and shuffling through prescribed rituals instead of taking on fluids. CHS players scrambled to find spots to sit on the ground in the shadows of the grandstand to save their legs during the 20-minute interlude.

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Photo: Jack Looney.

While the band played an abbreviated performance (the PA announcer reminding the crowd to stay after the game for the full show), and MHS crowned its homecoming king and queen, Sherry addressed his team.

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Photo: Jack Looney.

“There isn’t much difference between the two football teams except for the fact that I think you’re more physical,” he said.“They don’t believe they can lose to you. If you get back into this real quick, you watch who starts tightening up.”

With CHS getting the ball to start the second half, anything seemed possible.CHS came out firing, with a long, well-paced drive to start the second half. But the drive stalled, and all momentum seemed to go out of the Black Knights’ sideline at once.

Across the gridiron, the home field advantage swelled as the MHS crowd rang their cowbells a little louder, beat their thunder sticks a little harder, and blew their trumpets with a little more force as the half went on. The students were fired up, covered with body paint and dancing choreographed numbers, and the fans were knowledgeable, razzing the refs when they thought the crew missed a horse-collar tackle, and getting to their feet when the Mustangs broke a long run.

Photo: Jack Looney
Photo: Jack Looney.

With CHS playing eight guys on both sides of the ball and MHS asking only two to go both ways, it seemed only a matter of time before Coach Jeff Woody’s fast paced offense would take over. He and his team pushed the score to 54-10 by the time the final siren sounded.

Photo: Jack Looney
Photo: Jack Looney.

“He is a brilliant offensive guy,” MHS Athletic Director Fitzgerald Barnes said of his new coach. “He’s got it down.”

For the Black Knights’ faithful, the road back to glory has to be taken one step at a time. To Woody’s eye, CHS is heading in the right direction.

“They are a good football team, got a lot of good athletes, and the rivalry brought a lot of intensity early,” he said. “It was tough to get things going, but we stayed the course and kept on pounding and it finally started to open up for us.”

Photo: Jack Looney
Photo: Jack Looney.

After the game, neither coach wanted to talk about the long-term outlook this season. They’re just looking at their next opponents, waiting for the next time the lights come up on Friday night.

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Photo: Jack Looney.