Known for a smile as disarming as his talent, Italian flatpicker Beppe Gambetta plays acoustic arrangements in four languages—English, German, Italian and the provincial dialect of Genovese—on his 13th release, Short Stories. In his original compositions, the guitarist makes his affection for traditional folk music clear, and holds “America in his heart, and his roots in the sun and the olive trees of the Mediterranean sea.”
Three become one in the Swedish folk band Väsen, an acoustic trio now in its 27th year of touring. The veteran group, made up of Roger Tallroth on 12-string guitar, violist Mikael Marin and Olov Johansson, a prominent nyckelharpa (a “keyed fiddle”) player, is deeply rooted in the aged traditions of the Swedish countryside. Through energetic arrangements, Väsen weaves inspired improvisations and modern innovation into a musical tapestry of both old and new.
Local singer-songwriter Kat Somers has been performing and writing music since sixth grade. Her earnest, original tunes float on sunny melodies, acoustic picking and lyrics sung from the gut in a voice that powers its message through. The recent college grad embarks on a busy summer schedule that finds her booked throughout the region, thanks in part to 2015’s Blue Ridge EP, an effort that serves as a place setting for her full-length album due later this year.
Billed as two of acoustic music’s most forward-thinking virtuoso guitarists, Grant Gordy and Ross Martin pick out bluegrass, jazz and American traditionals in flawless two-part guitar creations that have critics elated about the duo’s 2016 album, Year of the Dog. Bluegrass Today says, “The way Ross and Grant make jazz guitar work on acoustics is among the record’s most impressive features, done in a way that fans of more traditional folk guitar styles will surely appreciate.”
Even with seven International Bluegrass Music Awards for Bass Player of the Year, it’s not all about the bass for Missy Raines. After gigging around, the talented lead singer stepped up to the mic in 2008 to front The New Hip quartet featuring mandolin, guitars, bass, drums and percussion, and the accolades keep coming. Deep South Magazine says, “The New Hip, along with bands such as the Avetts and Churchill, add their brilliance to the swiftly growing collection of newgrass artists that have brought southern music to the mainstream.”
Performers from the Blue Ridge Irish Music School grab their tin whistles and fiddles and lace up their ghillies for Irish Night at the Coffeehouse with traditional music, song and dance to benefit the nonprofit school. There will be kids’ activities and storytelling, too, because what’s a celebration of Irish tradition without folklore and fairies?
In the fashion world, LuLaRoe is bringing leggings back, one pop-up at a time. And it could be said that in the music world, Natalie Haas is helping to bring the cello back as a substratum for Celtic songscapes. Over the years she’s embraced the instrument, transforming its sound to complement those by the legendary Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser.
Haas, 33, met Fraser when she was 11 years old. Her parents had enrolled her and her sister in Fraser’s Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddle School in California. But unlike her sister, Brittany Haas, she didn’t play the fiddle. Instead, she lugged her cello off to the camp, where there was a specialty class devoted to its role in Celtic music.
“That camp really changed both my and my sister’s life and made us realize that music was something we could do and not just for fun,” says Haas, who is a professor at Berklee College of Music. “It was so important to us that we decided we wanted to make it our life’s work.” Five years after visiting the camp, Haas played her first show with Fraser, and the pair has performed together since. Fraser and Haas recently finished their fifth studio album and the duo will play at C’ville Coffee on March 11.
Natalie Haas and Alasdair Fraser
C’ville Coffee
March 11
For the new album, Ports of Call, Fraser and Haas have swayed from their staple Celtic melodies, which make up only half of the disc. The rest of the tunes were influenced by other cultures and music styles that they encountered while touring. “The ones that we are really exploring on this album are Scandinavia, Spain and France,” says Haas. Part of the exploration centers on the relationship between music and dance. “Halling,” one of the Scandinavian-inspired tracks on the album, is inspired by a Norwegian folk dance that involves acrobatics by male participants. “The goal is to kick off a hat that is resting on a pole that someone is holding up and it’s pretty far off the ground, so it’s a very impressive dance to watch,” says Haas.
“Waltzska for Su-A” is one of three songs that Haas wrote for the album. “It’s a little Celtic and a little Swedish,” she says. “That’s why it’s called ‘waltzska,’ a combination between a waltz and polska. It was written for a friend who came to visit me in Montreal.”
Haas, who has been hailed for bringing the cello back to Scottish music, explains how the instrument declined in popularity in Scotland—largely due to an increase of pianos and accordions that emerged in the 1900s. “They [instruments like the piano and accordion] could project more than the cello in terms of accompanying music for dancing. So cellos became more associated with orchestras and chamber music,” says Haas.
Today, Haas says she can count the number of cellists playing traditional music in a professional capacity on two hands. She credits Scott Skinner with being one of the last famous cellists in terms of traditional music, and notes that Abby Newton, a teacher at the Valley of the Moon camp 20 years ago, was one of the first cellists in recent times to play a role in its revival. “It’s still kind of a very niche thing, but we’re seeing more and more people—especially through the camp that we run—coming to study it,” says Haas, who has spearheaded the cello class at Valley of the Moon since 2002.
“I think it’s becoming more and more accepted, not only in traditional music but also in pop music and with singer-songwriters and all sorts of things,” she says. “It’s a very exciting time for the cello.”
Jordan Tice’s journey to becoming a force on the bluegrass scene started with classical guitar, jazz and rock ’n’ roll, then expanded into a variety of projects that found him keeping musical company with members of Crooked Still, Punch Brothers, Dave Rawlings Machine and Canadian folk act The Duhks. He was even tapped by banjo-playing actor/comedian Steve Martin, who used Tice for his twangy scoring of Shakespeare’s As You Like It in Central Park. His new album, Horse County, with a backing band by the same name, is his first all-original release and it highlights his new interest in ragtime.
Saturday, March 4. $13-15, 7pm. C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris St. prismcoffeehouse.org.
One year ago, Claire Hitchins took a leap of faith. While volunteering on the West Coast, Hitchins sat in her room and recorded her music for the first time, with the help of an old laptop and GarageBand. Within a few months, the award-winning podcast “On Being” featured Hitchins and her music, and her SoundCloud listenership grew into the thousands.
“Strangers heard my music and I got such amazing feedback,” Hitchins says. “To put something out into the world and have all this energy come back, it got me thinking, ‘Well, maybe there’s something to this.’”
After a five-hour jam session with her producer and current bassist, Alex Bingham, Hitchins entertained an idea she once thought impossible. She came back to the East Coast, raised more than $13,000 through Kickstarter, ditched GarageBand and made her first professional album, These Bodies.
Before the surreal experience of producing her album in the same studio as Lucinda Williams and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Hitchins had stepped into a formal studio only once. She could count on one hand how many times she performed her music in front of an audience. Though she grew up in Roanoke playing cello, participating in musicals and strumming the guitar and banjo, Hitchins is still getting used to calling herself a folk musician, instrumentalist and singer-songwriter.
“I remember feeling like I was never going to use the word ‘y’all,’” Hitchins says. “It wasn’t until I left Roanoke that I fully embraced the y’all.”
When she was younger, Hitchins spent many Friday nights at what she calls “the place to be”—a country store’s weekly jamboree in nearby Floyd. She remembers bands playing bluegrass and gospel music, while spectators slapped and stomped their feet.
“That was the first place I think I really experienced that richness of culture that is so distinctively Appalachian,” Hitchins says. “Neither of my parents are from the South. …My sense of belonging to this place of Appalachia didn’t feel like a birthright.”
Music and the mountains helped Hitchins come to terms with the complex history of rural Appalachia and the inheritance of a legacy that she found difficult to comprehend. Amid guitar and banjo chords that bounce from variation to variation, the deep pluck of a bass or electric guitar and the soft crescendo of a trombone accompanying Hitchins’ powerful voice, she envelops listeners in her vision of an Appalachia that is peaceful, harmonic and bold all at once.
Nature writers such as Mary Oliver also helped form Hitchins’ “inner landscape.” While studying at UVA, Hitchins initially thought she would be an environmental science major. But, after enrolling in her first course, she realized she would rather be in the outdoors than studying it.
Hitchins grew up steeped not only in the sounds and surroundings of Appalachia, but the language of sacred stories found in Judeo-Christian narratives, as well. Never seeking to exclude, impose or write liturgical music, Hitchins picks themes that resonate with a variety of listeners and that people can relate to regardless of their religious language. “Oh Moses, well he never saw the promised land / And Martin only saw it in his dream / But when I hear the thunder on the mountain / then I can almost hear that mighty stream,” Hitchins sings in “When It Rains,” inviting her listeners to what she refers to as a “holy space of being present.”
“There’s something about music that feels inherently sacred to me,” Hitchins says. “There is a certain reverence that I bring to my music that is informed by my faith.”
Hitchins also finds herself informed by artists like Mavis Staples and other musicians she identifies as courageous voices for justice during social movements like the fight for civil rights.
“Powerful women that have sung truth to power in different ways keep me going at times when it feels frivolous to be making music, especially when there are all these pressing needs,” Hitchins says. “These Bodies is not specifically political or topical, but I hope that there is a kernel of my desire for a more just and peaceful world.”
In addition to kicking off a tour in six states to promote These Bodies, Hitchins has been advocating across the country for that idea. Inspired by the Sioux Nation’s “sacred relationship with the natural world,” Hitchins traveled to Standing Rock Indian Reservation to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. She also attended the inauguration of President Donald Trump and sang with a protest group all day—even as police dragged them away.
As she wades into new waters, Hitchins finds sustenance in Charlottesville’s supportive music and arts community. The first time she shared her music publicly was at The Garage during her final year at UVA, just as she was about to leave Charlottesville. She says she didn’t anticipate another show, then last fall Hitchins celebrated her new album with a release show at The Haven and started a New City Arts Initiative residency.
Now, she’s preparing for another homecoming. Next Wednesday, February 15, at 7pm, Hitchins and bandmates Bingham and Evan Ringle will perform at C’ville Coffee, with Erin Lunsford opening.
“People have been so generous of their time and willing to share what they’ve learned and give good advice,” Hitchins says. “It feels like I’m in the right place.”
Singing, step-dancing fiddle player April Verch shows her roots in trademark fireball performances that channel the founding players of traditional folk music. The Ottawa Valley Canadian has been onstage since the age of 6, and with no sign of slowing down at age 38, she’s releasing The April Verch Anthology on February 17, an 18-track collection spanning from 1998-2015. Last year’s MerleFest appearance inspired Rolling Stone to name her one of the “12 Best Things We Saw at MerleFest.”
Friday, February 3. $16-18, 7pm. C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris St. 817-2633.