moe. brings new tunes and a familiar lineup to the Jefferson on March 22. Photo by Jay Blakesberg.
Rob Derhak thinks of Charlottesville fondly. The bassist, vocalist, and founding member of the band moe. recalls playing here “back in the old days,” when there was “that old bar behind the railroad tracks.”
Trax? “Yeah, I think that was it,” he says, but it’s like he still doesn’t quite believe it all happened.
Derhak’s band, with its funkily punctuated name, has been anchoring the jam rock scene for more than 30 years. And while a lot has changed since Derhak and moe. played Trax around the same time as DMB, Phish, Widespread Panic, Taj Mahal, and various Grateful Dead members, some things have remained remarkably consistent.
Yes, Trax is long gone, and moe. will play at the Jefferson Theater when the six-piece returns to Charlottesville on March 22. But the jam rockers will roll into town with a lineup that’s seen only one change since 1999: Al Schnier on guitar and vocals, Chuck Garvey on the same, Vinnie Amico on drums, Jim Loughlin providing percussion, and Derhak slapping the bass. The lone addition is Nate Wilson on keyboards.
Consistency has been key for moe., but the band has not been without its troubles. Derhak battled cancer in 2017, and took six months off due to the illness, putting moe. on hiatus in summer 2017. Derhak willed himself back on the road in early 2018.
COVID-19 capsized the band’s 30th-anniversary run in 2020, and in 2021, Garvey suffered a stroke. “2020 sucked—it sucked for everyone—but we tried to do everything we could,” Derhak says.
Schnier, Garvey, and Derhak formed moe. in 1990 while attending the University of Buffalo. Loughlin joined soon after. Amico came along in 1996. The experimental rockers’ breakout album came in 1998, with Tin Cans & Car Tires, headed up by the whimsical hit “Nebraska.” In 2007, moe.’s eighth album, The Conch, reached No. 1 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart.
moe.’s 2020 full length, This is Not, We Are, includes eight new songs, one (the Garvey-written “Undertone”) making its first appearance anywhere, along with older road-worn tracks like Derhak’s “Skitchin’ Buffalo” and Schnier’s “Crushing.”
The album epitomizes moe.’s one-of-a-kind songwriting style, honed over the decades, which draws on each band member, but somehow finds a way to land on something cohesive, something distinctively moe.
“It’s funny that it sounds that way, because it always feels like it is coming from all over the place,” Derhak says. “As a songwriter, I sit down and just start with the barest bones … and we’ve done it with each other for so long that we show up, keep an open mind, and give it that thing—I don’t know if it’s homogeneous—but it’s our sound.”
If every jam band has its own angle, Derhak figures he and his bandmates’ standout quality has always been their punk attitude, a finger in the face of all the improv troupes that take themselves too seriously.
But punk is a balance, Derhak admits. moe. also takes its music and songwriting, not to mention touring and playing live shows, quite seriously.
“The best part of playing every night and every gig that we do: Whenever we get into the improv sections and we start jamming, we are creating something new,” Derhak says. “For me, it is always about creating.”
On December 31 of last year, moe. evolved into its latest iteration. The band is known for its New Year’s concert runs, and when a recovering Garvey emerged at the Fillmore Philadelphia on NYE for “Meat,” it was the first time fans had seen him in 13 months.
Derhak says Garvey is not at 100 percent just yet. His speech is limited, and moe. won’t be performing songs where he provides lead vocals anytime soon. But Garvey’s voice box on “Nebraska” and reinvigorated guitar playing during the New Year’s Eve 2022 performance set the stage for what’s to come.
“The feeling right now is, ‘let’s keep rolling ’cause this is great,’” Derhak says. “The first time Chuck came out on stage on NYE, the first song he played, I started crying. I just didn’t know he would be as good as he was. It was like, ‘Okay, he can play again,’ and then something hit him and he tore into his guitar.”
At this point in their careers, Derhak and the rest of moe. are among the jam rock scene’s old guard. And Derhak says they relish the role. And they also appreciate the younger bands coming up and keeping the scene alive among the next generation.
“The one thing I can tell you is that the hardcore moe.rons, the ones that have been down since day one, they come to the shows and meet up with their friends, and it is all a family,” Derhak says. “They have found family in this group, and it all revolves around the show and the music. I still see the connection.”
Random Row’s Kevin McElroy says he’s had to up his prices because of hop cost increases. In 2023, German and Czech hops in particular will be pricier and scarcer due to poor harvests last year. Photo by Eze Amos.
Brewing beer is about control: controlling ingredients, controlling processes, controlling product.
But it’s also about deciding when to let go.
Take Three Notch’d Brewing Company. It started small, with brewmaster Dave Warwick, supported by a team of four administrators, making a few hundred barrels of craft beer per year at their Preston Avenue home.
At the time, in 2013, Warwick controlled a lot of what was going on. He brewed the beer and helped with market research, administrative tasks, marketing, and accounting.
As his company grew, Warwick had less control over the Three Notch’d brew-niverse. He began delegating responsibilities, and the change seems to have worked to the brewery’s advantage. 3NB now has a full accounting department, HR director, six-person marketing department, chief growth officer, VP of sales, and VP of retail. “That allows me to focus just on the liquid,” Warwick says. “Not wearing as many hats is great for both me and the company.”
Today, 3NB is the largest beer producer inside Charlottesville city limits by a wide margin. In-town brewers produced about 17,500 barrels of beer last year, with Three Notch’d accounting for roughly 15,000. At 31 gallons per barrel, that’s 542,500 gallons of beer produced in 2022—enough to fill 85 percent of an olympic-size swimming pool. Or enough to send 4.34 million pints sliding over the bartop.
The production number should tick up in 2023 to 23,500 barrels, with most Charlottesville breweries increasing production numbers and at least one small brewer expected to go online.
In other words, that olympic-size swimming pool will overflow by 60,000 gallons by the end of the year. Charlottesville drinkers will have access to nearly 6 million pints within a 10.3-square-mile area.
“There’s something really special about being able to go to a neighborhood brewery and drink a beer that was packaged literally an hour before you’re drinking it,” says Josh Skinner, director of brewing operations at Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville’s nano-est craft operation. “I think people recognize the value in that, and it’s why our industry has enjoyed continued enthusiasm and support from the community we serve.”
Peter McMindes, owner and head brewer at Rockfish Brewing Company, says he has little interest in distribution. “There’s legislation out there to allow small breweries to self-distribute; then we’d be able to put some specialty bottles out to local bottle shops,” McMindes says. “But we’re not dealing with economies of scale or volume that makes distribution worthwhile.” Photo by Eze Amos.
Dialing in
Can craft beer makers control their production numbers? Sure, to a certain extent. But they’re also beholden to market demand and, increasingly, supply chain and distribution issues.
Craft beer production and consumption totals are projected to increase substantially nationwide in the next year. This prediction is inconsistent with recent trends, according to Keith Clark, central Virginia sales director for Virginia Eagle Distributing Co.
Clark says the past several years saw craft beer slowly leak its “share of throat” as new drinks percolated. That doesn’t mean craft beer is shrinking, but it’s not growing at nearly the clip it did over the previous decade.
Hard seltzers were first to encroach on beer’s share, then it was ready-to-drink cocktails in cans, with seltzers taking a slight dip downward. “That’s not to say seltzers aren’t still doing extremely well,” Clark says. “It’s just not the hot new thing anymore.”
Brewers Association national beer sales and production data indicate craft beer continued its “long and unsteady recovery in 2022,” with retail sales back to pre-pandemic levels but “draught beer … still recovering.” In 2021, the last full year for which the association has comprehensive data, total U.S. beer sales were essentially flat, but craft volumes ticked up by 8 percent, raising small and independent brewers’ market share to 13.1 percent. Production volume showed similar 2021 growth, with overall beer ticking up 1 percent and craft growing 7.9 percent. Craft beer’s retail dollar sales also grew in 2021, to $26.8 billion. Analysts, though, say the increase was mostly due to consumers paying more for brew in bars and restaurants than they did in stores in 2020.
The Brewers Association reports 9,247 breweries operated nationwide in 2021. Five hundred fifty opened in 2022, but at least 200 closed. Brewery openings topped off in 2018, while closings reached a head in 2020, largely due to COVID-19. Even so, closure rates had increased every year since 2013, regardless of the C-word’s effect.
Charlottesville wasn’t immune to the trend, and after years of industry expansion, a well-regarded local shop, Reason Beer, closed its doors. Reason’s closing came about in no small part due to a star-crossed merger with Champion Brewing Company. “Our facility merger at the beginning of last year was so snake-bitten from the start when it comes to lead times and supply chain issues out of our control,” says Champion owner Hunter Smith.
Defying the openings trend locally was Rockfish Brewing Company, which launched a second nano-brewery and taproom last year on the Downtown Mall. This year, Neon Culture Brewing has a chance to launch a two-barrel system capable of brewing 500 barrels annually—though owner Corey Hoffman says he will likely continue operating at a low level out of the Decipher brewhouse—and SuperFly Brewing Co. expects to get off the ground and pump out up to 400 barrels.
“Without having been open, there already seems to be some enthusiasm in town for it,” says Ed Liversidge, SuperFly owner and operator. “I certainly think there is a town full of people willing to come and try new beer. I know that’s how I feel about it. I’ll always go check out the new place.”
Liversidge says he plans to carve his niche in the local taproom market as he goes, using consumer feedback to find the beers that resonate most. It’s a move that gives away a lot of control to beer drinkers.
But maybe central Virginia beer lovers are special, and maybe Charlottesville can support more breweries per capita than most small towns. After all, Richmond has the fourth-most breweries per capita in the country (25 breweries, for 10.77 per 100,000 residents), according to Move.org.
“All the small breweries here are quite different, and there are things I like about each of them,” says Liversidge, whose background and brewing lineage has taken him from the U.K. to the U.S. West Coast and now Virginia.
Decipher Brewing’s Barley Late Kölsch
was among several Charlottesville-area beers that won significant awards last August at the annual Virginia Craft Beer Cup competition. Photo by Tristan Williams.
Taking on challenges
Smith opened the Champion taproom doors adjacent to downtown Charlottesville in 2012. Times were simple then. Get raw materials, make unique beer, sell it across the bar. But Champion grew quickly, and with rapid growth came control issues.
One solution? Retake control of the environment in which consumers enjoy beer. For Smith and Champion, that meant featuring restaurants in their expansion strategy. The approach sidesteps Virginia’s sometimes tricky distribution regulations and ensures the product arriving at a beer-lover’s table is the one the brewer intends.
Enter COVID. Restaurant closures meant folks could only consume beer in their homes. Restaurants like Champion Grill in The Shops at Stonefield and the brewery’s Lynchburg location closed in 2021. Then, late last year, Champion announced a major distribution move, shifting its ale allocation to Bevana, a North Carolina-based company launched by former Champion principal Levi Duncan.
Three Notch’d Brewing Company started small, with brewmaster Dave Warwick, who was supported by a team of four administrators, making a few hundred barrels of craft beer a year at their Preston Avenue home. Photo by Ashley Cox Photography.
The latest wave of Charlottesville breweries, including Random Row Brewing Co., Decipher Brewing, Rockfish, Selvedge, and the still-to-come SuperFly, have all sidestepped beer distro challenges by sticking to taproom-only sales. Each ballparks its packaged to-go brewshare at around 10 percent of overall sales. That includes only hand-bottled or canned offerings and growlers/crowlers filled at the tap.
“I don’t really have much of a desire to distribute,” says Peter McMindes, Rockfish owner and head brewer. “There’s legislation out there to allow small breweries to self-distribute; then we’d be able to put some specialty bottles out to local bottle shops. But we’re not dealing with economies of scale or volume that makes distribution worthwhile.”
Supply chain issues are another story. The pandemic and an industry-wide drift away from bottled beer set off a can shortage two years ago. Now cans seem to be back, but brewers face the same raw materials cost increases as business owners do in nearly every economic sector.
“I’m getting emails from all our suppliers, from grain to hops to CO2, saying they have to raise prices, and we can’t just keep raising ours to the point that we price ourselves out of the market,” says Brad Burton, co-owner and head brewer for Decipher.
According to Skinner, sourcing malt from local malster Murphy & Rude has softened the blow of rising freight costs. Still, Random Row’s Kevin McElroy says he’s had to up prices due to hop cost increases. German and Czech hops in particular will be pricier and scarcer throughout 2023 after poor harvests last year.
Staffing is another issue befuddling brewers, but Burton says properly run nano-shops are uniquely suited to combat inevitable HR issues. “We were in the best possible spot we could have been in the shutdown,” he says. “We didn’t have any employees or distribution. The brewers that had large distributions took the brunt of the hit, because there was zero beer going out in kegs and being sold to restaurants. Just managing growth—that’s what gives you a sustainable model.”
Burton doesn’t expect to see further contraction in the craft brewing industry—people have been talking about a “bubble” for a decade, he says—and other brewers around town tend to agree. Breweries are notoriously helpful to one another, and the taproom sales model keeps locations from competing for shelf space. Warwick, who does have to worry about shelf space constraints, also points out the lack of competition between 3NB and the nanos. “That’s why it’s easy to be friends, get along, and help each other grow,” he says.
Smith, whose distribution at its height reached farther than any other Charlottesville-proper brewery, believes the industry is finally beginning to stabilize. Brewers can now forecast raw material pricing and need, not to mention consumer demand, he says. “Keg sales came back, but it’s not the same, and it may never be the same,” he says. “There was a point at which every restaurant had to become a beer bar. Now bars and restaurants are saying they don’t necessarily need 20 taps to make their customers happy. It’s more competitive for those taps, but volume is climbing back.”
After all the chaos of the last several years, maybe some sense of control is back.
“There’s something really special about being able to go to a neighborhood brewery and drink a beer that was packaged literally an hour before you’re drinking it,” says Josh Skinner, director of brewing operations at Selvedge Brewing. Photo by Eze Amos.
Tippling with trends
For his part, McMindes isn’t willing to give up control when it comes to flavor-of-the-week preferences. “We don’t do trendy stuff,” the Rockfish owner says. “We don’t even name our beers. And our logo doesn’t have anything to do with beer.”
McMindes says he went into brewing because he couldn’t find anything on the market as good and suited to his own taste as he made on his homebrew system. It’s a familiar hubris that has led to the downfall of many well-meaning hobbyists-cum-pros. But McMindes might be onto something by emphasizing personal taste.
In McMindes’ mind, nano breweries have more control than anyone else in the beer biz. They aren’t beholden to growth or profits. They can listen to their customers right over the bar, taking the hard work out of market research.
For breweries that do follow trends, Clark says the one that stands out above all others is consumers looking to control themselves—by drinking non-alcoholic beer. “Our Anheuser-Busch rep showed me the NA numbers in Europe, and I was like, ‘There is no way,’” Clark says.
The trend has certainly spread across the Atlantic. Clark says Virginia Eagle ran out of its NA portfolio during the past Dry January, a now-annual tradition when sober-curious folks give up the alcoholic goods.
Smith notes that non-alcoholic beer has become tastier due to the ever advancing science behind it, and drinkers who would never before reach for an O’Doul’s or St. Pauli NA now select near beer over hazy IPAs, adjunct stouts, and fruited sours.
These days, not only are the national guys getting into the NA game, but the locals are going buzz-free as well. 3NB looks to lead the mocktail barrage in Charlottesville. Warwick says the brewery doesn’t know yet how much NA will constitute its production this year, but he and his team launched the non-alcoholic Uncool brand in January with plans to expand.
Non-alcoholic drink demand is echoed in a trend several local brewers point out—a growing gusto for lagers at 4.0-range ABVs rather than IPAs in the 6s and above. Burton, for one, is all about that lager life.
But NA fanaticism flies in the face of another trend that has the attention of local brewers: relatively high ABV cocktails in cans. Even though it ain’t beer, the big guys like 3NB and Champion are launching ready-to-drinks to grab a share of the latest drinking deluge.
Clark says he’s seeing some of today’s price-conscious consumers going to the extreme on lager love, rejecting the skyrocketing price of craft beer and rediscovering quaint macros like PBR. Warwick says he hasn’t seen the same.
“My favorite thing about craft beer is that the loyalty isn’t so much to brands as it is to style,” Warwick says. “Craft beer drinkers share the love … and everything I see is people will still gladly pay extra for flavor, quality, and to support local brewers and craft.”
McMindes notes that, locally, most breweries have gone the Champion route and try to control the downstream consumption environment by running restaurants instead of taprooms only. His approach? Stay on brand. Reject the trend.
When Hunter Smith launched Champion Brewing Company in 2012, he says he wanted his brand to be a foil to the area’s big players like Starr Hill, Blue Mountain, and Devils Backbone. Photo by Eze Amos.
Finding a balance
Even Charlottesville’s beer can’t be controlled.
Yes, we know citywide production should be about 23,500 barrels next year. But we also know that crouched just outside of town are major brewing industry tigers who stand to top that production by at least five-fold.
Starr Hill, opened by Mark Thompson in downtown Charlottesville in 1999 before craft beer was cool, can reportedly dump nearly 30,000 barrels annually from its Crozet and Roanoke brewhouses. Devils Backbone, purchased by A-B InBev in 2016 to the chagrin of beer nerds, boasts production of 84,000 annual barrels. And Blue Mountain, whose owner Taylor Smack also runs South Street Brewing downtown, makes almost 3,000 barrels per year.
Several other players dot the 151 corridor—Thompson’s Brewing Tree, WildManDan Brewery, Hazy Mountain—which has become a destination for beer lovers, many of whom have no idea what’s going on down the road in Charlottesville.
“That corridor is only getting busier and busier,” Warwick says—and 3NB is looking to get in on the 151 action; the team has purchased the assets of the former Wild Wolf Brewing Company and plans to run it under its own label. “It’s such a destination,” Warwick says. “It’s definitely the hub in Virginia for amazing alcoholic beverages, from wine to beer to hard cider to distilling, even mead.”
When Smith launched Champion, he in fact wanted his brand to be a foil to the big players right outside town. Starr Hill, Blue Mountain, and Devils Backbone had seen so much success selling lagers; he and Champion would carve their niche in unique ales and one-off releases. “We used to joke that we never needed to brew a single lager beer,” Smith says.
That outlook has changed, Smith admits, as so many things have on the local beer scene. For years, Champion was the biggest brew producer inside city limits. The company pushed its Woolen Mills Missile Factory, named after the brewery’s flagship IPA, to a 15,000 barrel capacity in 2016, with lagers a major part of the mix.
But last year, Smith and Champion moved the production site outside town. The new brewery was “essentially a construction site” most of the year, Smith says, brewing only 2,500 barrels in 2022. This year, Smith expects the number to be back up to nearly 7,000.
For Champion, other things over the last several years were beyond control. The closure of two Champion Hospitality Group restaurants was only the culmination of the group’s supply chain and consumer demand issues.
“Expansion through restaurants has always been something that we had hoped to do in partnership. We are a brewery. We are not restaurant experts,” Smith says. “But I have to laugh. Expanding through restaurants when we did was a stroke of bad luck.”
Smith says the future is under control, though, and it’s a sentiment that’s reflected by brewers all across the hamlet.
“Last year was really tough,” Smith says. “But without going into great detail, keep watching. We are not done.”
The Palmyra resident started making quirky clay figures because he wasn’t having fun at his day job. He wants people to see his pieces and think, “That’s fun.” And if he stops having fun making the tchotchkes, he’ll give it up.
“Basically, I hated my job so much—being a mechanic—I needed something sort of comedic or less serious when I got off work,” he says.
Brown and his girlfriend got into clay together, learning to fashion figures on the fly. They made whatever came to mind. For Brown, it was odd, moody little cartoons, offbeat animals, various chonkies, cutesy utensils, and a dervish of devils and demons.
He stuck with it. He started in polymer clay and improved quickly. He branched into other materials. He finished and painted some pieces he was proud of. He put them on his shelves. Friends saw them and laughed. The art started conversations, and maybe an argument or two. The friends commissioned a few pieces—like two clay cat toppers for a couples’ wedding cake.
Everyone was having fun.
Brown launched Strange Clay Creations to try his hand at selling his sculptures. So far, that’s been a good time as well, with some reservations. He has an Etsy store—though the logistics are a drag—and he’s done an art fair—though the high demand left him spent and lacking inspiration. The best outlet, he says, has been through C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery, where he’s also been inspired by the other creatives in residence.
Some people don’t get Brown’s work. “What’s the point?” the killjoys ask. “For you, they do nothing,” Brown quips. But he’s made some practical pieces—ornaments and magnets and the like.
Brown started Strange Clay Creations with no formal art training, but working on his own motorcycles over the years likely helped him hone his handiwork. And he’s always been creative by nature.
“Maybe ’90s Nickelodeon TV warped my brain—growing up with those strange cartoons like ‘Ren & Stimpy’ and ‘Rocko’s Modern Life,’” he says. “I never cared about school as much as art and music.”
Fortunately for his psyche, Brown’s moved on from his job as a professional mechanic. His new gig as a media producer isn’t a bummer, but he’s not ready to give up what’s become his after-work outlet.
“I’ve been at it for three to four years, and the first one looked like a 2-year-old did it,” Brown says. “Now it’s definitely more refined and polished, and I like where it’s going. As long as I like making them and seeing other people’s reactions, that’s enough.”
John Kelly penned “Three Bright Stars” after attending the vigil for the three UVA student-athletes who were killed in November. “Like so many of us here in Charlottesville,“ Kelly says, “I was stunned and heartbroken by the senseless violence that took those three remarkable young men and changed the lives of so many others forever.” Supplied image.
John Kelly is a writer. Sometimes, he’s a songwriter. And with “Three Bright Stars,” he proves he’s a pretty damn good one.
Best known for his work as the Virginia Film Festival’s PR pointman, Kelly has been writing for decades—penning reams of corporate communications along with songs.
Before moving to Charlottesville in 2001, Kelly started his journeyman music career playing shows around his hometown in Connecticut and in New York. In 2000, he released his first EP, Brighter Days. It was a promising early effort, a kind of Leonard Cohen-meets- Springsteen nugget of earthen salt.
Family life—particularly Kelly’s two children, small at the time—slowed the songwriter’s gigging through the aughts. But he never completely gave up the strings and singing lifestyle, and around 2010, he went back to it.
“Since then, it’s just been steadily building,” Kelly says. “It’s a matter of me recognizing again where that fits in my life.”
Where exactly does it fit? Like many singer- songwriters dotting Charlottesville’s live music scene, it’s no longer about making it big for Kelly. He’s at a point in his life and career where if he weren’t happy making music for his own reasons, he wouldn’t do it anymore.
Since 2010, Kelly’s found more and more reasons to keep writing songs. He’s grown some critical musical relationships, played lots of shows, and consistently released tunes and tidbits on his social media channels. His second album, In Between, came out in 2020.
John Kelly. Supplied photo.
“I have watched the songwriting scene here evolve for a long time, and there is a great history here that we all know very well, but there are also the people that work behind the trade,” Kelly says. “I’m continually impressed with the art makers in Charlottesville and the singer-songwriters that come from so many different approaches. In this region, I think you have to speak in your own language.”
Helping rekindle Kelly’s love for making music has been local guitar legend and band shapeshifter Rusty Speidel. The pair hit it off when they met over 10 years ago and soon began discussing an album. For In Between, they went into the booth with James McLaughlin, and the result was a ringing tone and clean production under Kelly’s earnest vocals and bittersweet lyrics with spiritual underpinnings.
Kelly and Speidel have continued to collaborate in the three years since, and Kelly says he has nine songs in the bank for when they decide to record again.
“Three Bright Stars,” an ode to the UVA student-athletes shot and killed last November, is likely to be on any forthcoming John Kelly record. The pop gospel dirge, which has drawn nearly three times more streaming listens than any other track Kelly’s produced to date, tells the story of the student vigil on UVA’s South Lawn shortly after the shooting.
The song’s first verse describes the crowd arriving on the Lawn: “There had been microphones and TV lights, till the kids said take ’em down.” The second verse follows the students on their way home: “There’s a man who sits beside the bridge—he’s there most every day and night; tonight the only thing he’s asking is, ‘Is everyone all right?’”
After arriving home himself, Kelly saw a photo of the event on social media. He said it clearly showed “three bright stars shining over the proceedings.” He had his chorus.
With the blessing of Matt Weber, UVA’s chief creative officer, who took the photo that inspired the song’s title and refrain, and Jody Kielbasa, vice provost for the arts, Kelly headed back to McLaughlin’s Mountainside Studio with Speidel, as well as Michael Clem, Chris Holden, and Richmond-based keyboardist Daniel Clarke.
They laid down the track, but Kelly felt it was missing a beat.
Sensitive to the tragedies Charlottesville’s endured in the past several years and feeling his own tangential position in the student shooting, he’d had some reservations about putting “Three Bright Stars” out in the world. It was the students dealing with the tragedy whose story it was to tell, and he wanted them represented. “I asked myself, ‘Does there need to be another voice, and does it need to be mine?’” Kelly says. “I made a pact with myself to make sure I only recounted what I saw and what I experienced. It wasn’t going to make a statement about what should be done or assume any understanding of the way that these students felt or the way that these families felt.”
Kelly asked Michael Slon, director of UVA’s University Singers, to help complete the song. Slon gathered eight students to record a choral backing vocal, and “Three Bright Stars” was ready for release.
As for his own future, Kelly’s small kids have grown into young adults—and musicians themselves—and he has more time for writing these days. There’s that third album possibly coming soon, and he’s found a niche in local live performances, particularly on the winery and brewery circuit.
“I’m just really delighted to be any part of this incredible music community and to be able to release a song that seems to be resonating with people,” he says. “It was almost like it was supposed to happen in the way it did. And I feel honored that anyone is taking the time to listen.”
Zach Snider and Dan Zimmerman have been trading design ideas since the beginning. As co-owners of Alloy Workshop, they’ve been constant collaborators since they started out.
But when the longtime colleagues launched their own home renovations last year, they took different approaches. Where Snider went the way Alloy sends its clients—fully designing the renovation before building—Zimmerman allowed himself creative freedom and let the project meander.
Still, Snider and Zimmerman relied on each other a fair amount to bring their visions—one a popped top and new second floor, the other a first story reimagining—from blueprint to realization.
“Because Zach was sort of doing a parallel project, I would get into something and give him a call or shoot him a text,” Zimmerman says. “I might ask, ‘What do you think about this roof line or this, that, or the other?’ We weren’t working in isolation—we were kind of helping each other out. And that’s really the genesis of our partnership to begin with.”
Photo: Darren SetlowPhoto: Darren Setlow
Zimmerman’s build-design
Alloy Workshop’s tagline says it all: “Architecture led design build.” Never would Snider and Zimmerman recommend going the other way and building before designing.
Zimmerman did not take his own advice. He and his wife, Serena Gruia, sat down one morning and chatted about how they wanted to live in their home. They brainstormed an idea and went in headlong.
“As with most projects Dan and I start, it’s over coffee and he gets a little twinkle in his eye and starts with the phrase ‘What do you think if we…,’” Gruia says. “He’s kind of the mastermind, but we collaborate. We like to dream together.”
Zimmerman’s idea? To turn the couple’s screened porch into an enclosed room—and make it their kitchen. They set to work, with Zimmerman focused on the technical side of the project and Gruia playing the role of client, making creative suggestions and selecting finishing details.
Making a porch a room is technical indeed. Screened rooms are sloped by design. Their floors are set at an angle to eject any water finding its way in. Zimmerman and Gruia’s porch canted 3.5″ over about 14′. After Zimmerman and his team leveled, enclosed, and plumbed the room, Gruia stepped in with touches like a counterintuitive white countertop. She said she knew it would work in the couple’s residential kitchen because she’d seen a similar one at Shenandoah Joe Coffee.
“It was a pretty big transformation,” Zimmerman says. “It’s my favorite place in the house.”
Photo: Darren SetlowPhoto: Darren Setlow
The kitchen was only the beginning. The cooking space had previously occupied a common area with Zimmerman and Gruia’s dining room. Moving it meant they would have a standalone eating and entertaining area. The space would eventually feature one of the couple’s favorite details: a wallpapered feature wall with daring accents.
The dining room would also be the site of the first major project audible. As the pair considered the two archways that stood at separate ends of one of the room’s walls, they wondered if they could connect them to open the room entirely. Again, Gruia helped on the details while Zimmerman navigated the load-bearing demo and electrical rerouting.
Zimmerman and Gruia also transformed their home’s exterior, installing a metal roof in the course of the project. The update not only solved a flying-shingles-in-high-wind problem, but also tied together the house’s modern addition and traditional main structure. New windows and dormers across the back of the home also followed.
“When I talk to clients, I often warn them about pulling the thread on the sweater because it quickly gets on unraveled,” Zimmerman says. “But it was a controlled skid.”
Photo: Andrew Shurtleff
Snider’s design-build
Adding a second floor to a single-story house isn’t for everyone. It calls for a perfect combination of structure, market conditions, and owner preferences.
For Snider and his family, all the conditions were there.
The contractor, his wife, and two kids had outgrown their 1940s-era, 1,200-square-foot ranch (and finished basement), but they loved their neighborhood. Many of the surrounding houses—those ever-important comps—were valued at more than their own.
“We were in a unique position in our neighborhood,” Snider says. Indeed, his wife had purchased the place years before at a quarter of the surrounding homes’ current value. The massive renovation project would indeed cost more than the Sniders had originally spent, but it wouldn’t price them out of the ’hood.
Photo: Andrew ShurtleffPhoto: Andrew Shurtleff
Still, the Sniders explored the local housing market. They couldn’t find anything bigger while also being better suited to their lifestyle and in an ideal location.
The linchpin for Snider when deciding whether to love it or list it? Their existing home had a sturdy attic floor framed with 2’x8’s and was constructed with cinder blocks straight to the roof—basically “a big foundation with a roof on it,” he says.
When Snider drew plans for the new second floor, he left all that existing structure in place. “We didn’t even have to damage the ceiling below for a new subfloor,” he says. “Had we had 2’x6’’s, we would have had to rework that floor system, which would not only add expense, but it would have been logistically more difficult and added time.”
Photo: Andrew Shurtleff
When the work was finished, the Snider family had taken what was once a two-bedroom, one-bath home and given it three bedrooms and two baths, doubling its footprint. In addition to popping the top and adding the second story, they bumped out the rear of the home to make room for an expanded kitchen. Gone were the first-floor bedrooms, instead adding a mudroom, office, and dining and living room.
One of the most difficult parts of the project for the Sniders? Figuring out where to live while the massive renovation went on around them. Fortunately, the family’s basement offered just enough room to get by and save nine months’ worth of rent. “We definitely got a bed full of water during one rainstorm,” Snider says. “It was cramped, but we made it work.”
Lessons learned
Zimmerman and Snider haven’t changed their outlook on customer renovations after the great parallel own-home projects of 2022. But good things did come of trying a few new approaches.
For one thing, Zimmerman says he created new partnerships he never would have otherwise. And he learned a thing or two about working with clients with his wife serving as one of them. In a relationship where he felt more compelled to give in to demands, he agreed to some non-traditional finishes.
Snider said he also made some bold moves he might have avoided with clients, like vaulting his upstairs ceilings and using a labor intensive penetrating oil floor finishing process. “Sometimes it’s just hard to justify the financial impact to a client,” he says.
Zimmerman agreed, musing on the cabinet lighting he used in his kitchen, the shuffleboard court he put in his backyard, and the sauna Snider built in his basement.
For Gruia, the project was all about exploring what was important for her and her family. “Dan and I love to brainstorm together, and we get excited about new ideas about how we are going to live together,” she says. “I want our home to be where my kids want to be and where their friends want to be. The design work and the things we do is all about making it that place.”
UVA club Taste of
Home's pop-up dinner
events have featured
feasts ofSyrian,
Afghani, Honduran,
Indonesian, Bengali,
and Turkish cuisines. Photo: Chelsea McClintock
With culinary delicacies stretched across white linen in the comfortable outdoor space at Belmont’s Southern Crescent restaurant, giddy gastronomes arriving to the first dinner hosted by Taste of Home in 2018 may not have realized the spread was organized by college undergrads.
One of the University of Virginia’s more than 1,000 student clubs and organizations, Taste of Home is still hosting meals four years after its founding by then-UVA student Mayan Braude. Though the journey hasn’t been without its setbacks.
The club and its rotating cast of 30 or so activist members hosts several annual pop-up dining events around Charlottesville to honor the refugee and immigrant community. So far, Taste of Home has featured feasts by nearly a dozen local chefs and home cooks across 10 dinners, lunches, and takeout services.
“It’s really important to us to kind of create a greater sense of community between the university and the surrounding area, as well as giving voices to different demographics that aren’t really elevated,” says Ella Maufair, a second-year UVA student who serves as one of Taste of Home’s co-coordinators.
Syrian, Afghani, Honduran, Indonesian, Bengali, and Turkish cuisine have all had their place in the spotlight since Taste of Home began hosting meals. Featured chefs have included sisters Jamileh and Khadija Hemmati, who fled hostility in Afghanistan in 2016, and Neta Fitria, who moved to the United States from Indonesia to get married and support her family. The cooks receive all proceeds from Taste of Home meals and consult on planning and pricing to make sure everything’s covered.
“We really do work one-on-one with the partnering chefs all the time,” says Sarah Kim, another club co-coordinator who’s in her fourth year at UVA. “We make sure they approve everything we send out and they approve of the pricing we give the public. Everything we do is for the chef…and we really get to know them as people and as friends. It’s quite humbling.”
After several dinners at locations around town into 2020, Taste of Home was forced to move its pop-ups to spaces on or near Grounds. According to Sarah Kim, another club co-coordinator, the move was driven by accessibility—the pandemic simply closed off many of the organization’s options. Some local restaurants still remain hesitant to host pop-ups.
Taste of Home innovated and expanded its mission during the shutdown, switching to “pick-up dinners” and focusing on refugee advocacy. The group launched the Taste of Home Afghanistan Emergency Relief Fund in 2021. The organization has held other events, including a bake sale, and grown its Instagram presence to help expand its reach.
Co-coordinator Layne Johnson says the organization would like to move its events back into the community next spring, when its coordinators hope to host another dinner at Southern Crescent. According to Johnson, the organization continues to grow, and its new members are inevitably students truly passionate about the mission of helping members of the refugee and immigrant community.
As it expands, the nonprofit is focused on securing grant financing through the university and beyond, and contacting more local refugees and immigrants. Taste of Home has so far developed its connections through local religious and other community organizations and is always looking for folks willing to cook for a crowd.
“The main word that comes to mind when I think about Taste of Home is ‘community,’” Johnson says. “It is about bringing people together. We see so many different faces at these events, and to support these local chefs, it feels great.”
Restaurateur and locally renowned musician Jay Pun is 100 percent Thai. But he still thinks a lot about authenticity.
In 2016, Pun traveled to his ancestral home and visited an open-air market in northern Thailand. He was on the hunt for a native lute known as a phin. He’d owned one years before, but it was decorative, nothing authentic.
Pun and his cousins happened upon a local luthier at the market. The Charlottesville native, whose family opened the area’s first Thai restaurant in 1997, bought one of the instruments—essentially a three-stringed guitar—brought it home, and began writing songs. He quickly fell in love with the instrument’s tones and traditions.
“It was similar to the way I think about food,” Pun says. “Even though I am Thai, I didn’t want it to be a gimmick and appropriate the music of another culture.”
Wanting deeply to do the phin justice, Pun researched its history. He took an online class with a Thai phin player, who pointed out the ways Pun naturally brought his Americanized influence to the instrument. He continued to work at it.
Pun formally learned his musicianship at Berklee College of Music. It was there that he also met his wife and other half of the successful world beat duo Morwenna Lasko & Jay Pun. While his family grew its local culinary footprint—they now own Thai Cuisine & Noodle House and Chimm—Pun and his wife produced several albums of their guitar and violin music, and toured around Virginia.
Lasko and Pun are still working on new music, but kids, responsibilities, and the pandemic have conspired to slow them down. And in early 2021, tragedy struck, and it deepened Pun’s love of his own heritage: Eight women of Asian descent were shot and killed while working at a spa in Atlanta. “That was a pinnacle point in my life. I came out as Asian,” Pun says.
Despite being rooted in Thai traditions since birth, Pun says he had largely assimilated to white culture. It was simply what he knew his entire life. But the Atlanta shooting woke him up and made him realize that Charlottesville in many ways doesn’t know its Asian community. Many in the community don’t even know one another.
At Chimm, Pun likes to push palates. While so much of U.S.-based Asian cuisine is watered down for local tastes, he says Charlottesville has embraced many authentic culinary styles.
And with the phin, Pun continues to push his own musical palate. He’s particularly taken with the music of northeastern Thailand. As he begins thinking about the area, its food also springs to his mind.
“It’s a bit different—it’s very spicy on its own, where a lot of the food in central Thailand is not,” he says. In the northeast, the Thai people often eat with their hands, Pun says, taking handfuls of glutinous rice and using it much as Ethiopian people use injera to scoop up delicacies. It’s a type of cuisine that has only recently started to move West.
When Pun’s family opened their first restaurant a quarter century ago, even the more Americanized version of Thai cuisine was considered adventurous.
And while the States might not be ready for traditional phin music, the time may come for that, as well.
“It’s cheesy, but it’s true—there’s a beauty that comes from the way music and food bring people together,” Pun says. “Look at any culture: blues coming from enslaved people and singing about what they’re eating and about being in the kitchen. Music and food are completely entangled.”
Pro Camera's longtime
lead technician
bought the business
this year and is
ushering the store—
and, to some extent,
film photography—
into its next era. Photo: Tristan Williams
Ryan Jones bought Pro Camera on West Main from Bill Moretz just a few months ago, but he’s been helping put the place in the national flashlight for several years.
Jones, who studied media and photography at the University of Virginia, has turned himself into a go-to resource for analog camera repair. He’s been entrenched in the local photography community since his uni days, but he’s never formally studied the mechanics of cameras. Moretz, a master technician, showed him the way of the shutter.
“He gave me some pointers, and I was able to step in and start learning,” Jones says. “I just took to it—kind of had the knack. I’ve taught myself a good majority of the repairs, but it is a constant learning process.”
As Pro Camera’s lead technician since 2020, Jones became an indispensable part of the team when Moretz began working from home due to COVID. Moretz decided to retire officially by the end of the year and sold the business he founded in 1983 to Edward Bricker.
Photo: Tristan Williams
About six months ago, Jones decided it was time to move on. He had a job lined up with another photo firm in Pennsylvania and was on his way out the door when Bricker crunched the numbers. If Jones left, he figured he’d lose too much repair revenue to stay out of the dark room.
He offered to sell the place to Jones, Jones accepted, and the nearly 40-year-old business was saved.
“The position we occupy in the market is unique because this is an industry that is and has been on the decline for many years,” Jones says. “And almost because of that, it has allowed us to position ourselves advantageously and capture what is left of a dying market.”
According to Jones, other camera shops the country over claim they offer repairs on old equipment but actually send the devices to Pro Camera. The out-of-town repair submissions come from Chicago, New York, California—”all over the world,” Jones says.
One of the keys to keeping the flagging hobby afloat, according to Jones, is making sure components are available to repair old cameras. As more time passes since manufacture, designs go out of production, and camera makers stop supporting their legacy products, it becomes increasingly difficult to harvest old parts from other broken down machines. Jones has taught himself rudimentary machining and metalworking and even dabbled in 3D printing to address the component supply issue.
But as smartphone cameras become better with every new product release, how can an industry like analog photography compete? Jones says it’s not about competing for the old school shutterflies—that race to the next best thing in color and resolution misses the aesthetic point for pixel purists. And for the new school, those pro-level pocket computer/cameras have their well-documented downsides.
“Film is coming back, depending on who you ask,” Jones says. “For older folks going back to it…it is an economy of nostalgia. And young folks are finding film and the way it features in their social behavior is healthier than the digital forms of media.”
Jones says he remains committed to his ties to the local film community, which he developed working on a long-term photo ethnography of the Woolen Mills neighborhood while in school. And he only hopes to strengthen those ties. He wants Pro Camera, once a somewhat sterile storefront, to be a place for pixophiles to congregate, feel comfortable, and share ideas.
Is Charlottesville the next big not-so-point-and-click hot spot? Hard to say. Still, Jones says he’s just getting started.
“We have a lot of different goals,” he says. “The first is the marathon of manufacturing and continuing to learn how to keep these cameras circulating. But we also want Pro Camera to be approachable. …If you’re entering the store, we would love to sell you something, but we also want you to share your thoughts and share the space.”
It wasn’t love at first sight for Brian Tuskey and the split-foyer, two-story house that would eventually become his home. But now, with a recent reno that modernized and maximized space especially in the kitchen, the local architect has made the house his own.
“It was this ugly tan brick, the split foyer turned me off, and I didn’t want to live in it,” Tuskey says. “But it’s a simple rectangle, with no dormers or fluff. It’s just form and structural systems.”
Tuskey knew the house had been built at a time (around 1975) when construction materials were high-quality and craftspeople took pride in their work. And he figured it would be simple to knock down the walls that cut into the open concept he and his family desired.
And then there was the attic. It was a smallish space that was all but unused when the Tuskey family bought the place. Rather than continuing to use it as a storage space/junk repository, the architect envisioned popping the top—raising the second floor ceiling to the roof to maximize space.
It was more than 10 years before the Tuskeys got around to the project, but by Thanksgiving of last year, they had completed a full kitchen, dining room, and living room renovation. Now, the second floor areas feature clean lines, increased natural light, and wide open space. The cabinetry, all composed of uniform white oak with 100 percent horizontal graining, ties the three rooms together, and the newly raised ceilings, reaching 12 feet at their apex, allowed Tuskey to increase storage space and window size.
“It’s all the same palette,” Tuskey says. “I wanted it to be the same material throughout the space—super clean and modern, but a wood tone to bring softness and visual texture. Rather than being modernism with a capital M, it’s still warm and lived in.”
Photo: Stephen Barling
Tuskey has never found his 2,400-square-foot home too small for his family of four, so he felt no need to add square footage during the renovation. But the open concept, increased glass surfaces, and larger openings all contribute to a feeling of more room to breathe.
Tuskey and his team refinished the home’s red oak floors and, in the kitchen, did away with its old plastic laminate countertops to bring in Virginia mist granite counters and backsplashes. The material, quarried in Culpeper, lends the kitchen dark gray tones and active white swirls. “The whole thing needed new life,” Tuskey says. “If we hadn’t gone to the extent we did in the renovation, we still would have wanted a new kitchen.”
Photo: Stephen Barling
The new kitchen layout features significant counter space stretching around into a breakfast bar, a large stainless steel refrigerator, double ovens, a built-in microwave, a fully vented range, and an additional drinks fridge. A single-basin sink looks through a large single-pane window into the backyard. The fixtures are stainless steel and angular, completing the modern look.
The kitchen’s sharp lines and stark colors highlight the aesthetic Tuskey has been drawn to since architecture school. He credits his wife with contributing to the project as well, playing the role of customer in asking the right questions and making him think outside the modern box.
“It was sort of a first … going completely on one of my own designs,” he says. “My wife jumped on board and loved it, but she was also a great sounding board and said so when something didn’t make sense.”
Now, while one of the Tuskeys cooks dinner, they can look out into their living room and feel connected to others, whether it’s one of the kids doing homework or making a friendship bracelet. But does the fantasy of open concept match reality? Tuskey says he selected the millwork and designed the cabinetry to create some spatial delineation—plus, there’s always running away.
“Our lower level serves the purpose almost of a basement,” he says. “The idea of an open living plan can sometimes backfire, but we knew that by opening this up, we could also find places to have alone time. We can always retreat to the downstairs.”
Blogger and influencer Renee Byrd throws a bit of comedy and entertainment into her “recipes” for health and wellness. Supplied photo.
Charlottesville-based wellness guru Renee Byrd was a successful influencer before being an influencer was cool.
Byrd launched her blog, Will Frolic for Food, in 2012. The goal was to “provide free tools for living well … recipes, advice, yoga videos, and entertainment to sensitive souls.” In a few short years, she was working part-time hours while making a full-time income through advertisements and sponsored posts.
But a bout with illness and a dose of influencer fatigue began to fray Byrd’s enthusiasm. At the end of 2020, she stepped away from her successful blog, which had earned her notice from national outlets like the Food Network, Better Homes & Gardens, and Self, to focus on her personal life and well-being.
“The thing that bothers me is the culture around influence,” says Byrd. “It can be very egotistical and fake. Thankfully, a lot of the people I’ve worked with in the past in the food realm have been great. I’ve always thought, ‘If you are going to be an influencer, be in the food space; they are kind people that are there to be educators.’”
Renee Byrd. Photo: Tiffany Jung.
Now, married and living in Belmont with her beloved Australian sheepdog and a baby on the way, Byrd is plotting her way back into influencer culture.
After stepping away from Will Frolic for Food, Byrd continued to create content through comedy. With a background in theater and music, she has counted herself an artist, photographer, writer, musician, yoga teacher, and entrepreneur over the years. To stay active, she developed an off-beat Instagram presence doing comedic skits with characters like the insatiable Sugar Gollum and a cringey cohort of earnest commune members. She took on issues as heavy as abortion and as light as hiking sandals. She grew her Instagram following to nearly 40,000.
“My philosophy about comedy is to be true to your own perspective,” Byrd says. “I have been very deeply involved in the wellness and food industry, and I know a lot about all those worlds. I feel it’s important to be a voice within the food world, because there is a lot of bullshit.”
Her next step is to get back to Will Frolic for Food. While she finds so much of the food and wellness influencer space to be about “greenwashing” and selling under the guise of self-help—“there is so much stuff out there that you don’t need to be healthy or happy,” she says—she still believes in the power of the medium.
Byrd, who also runs Frolic Coffee at the Ix Farmers Market with her husband, a wellness coach by training, has always focused on free-form health journeys. Folks have to follow their own path to happiness, she says, and they can do so many things to improve themselves without spending any money.
“There is a lot of amazing work being done, but it’s buried,” Byrd says. “In the wellness and health and food world, you get the best results with self-led discovery. A lot can be done with a health coach, but they can’t just tell you what to do. Proper coaching is being a masterful asker of questions so people can come to their own conclusions. To reach your own unique, ideal health, some people need to run a lot, and some people need to walk a lot.”
