Tropical inland: Party like it’s sunny Santa Monica in a flashback to the origins of fitness culture at Charlottesville’s IX Beach Club. Muscle Beach is the theme at this week’s local gathering, recreated with weight training and a pose-off to flaunt your hard bod. The work-out and splash-about opportunities come complete with a rocking run-through of ‘80s hits.
Sally Rose leads her trio Shagwüf in Sweet Freakshow, an anniversary performance to celebrate five years of stirring up crowds with the group’s psychedelic, retro swagger. “The most punk thing you can do in divisive times is to write music and try and bring bodies together, to sweat and celebrate being alive and compassionate,” says Sally Rose, who promises fire dancing, burlesque, sword-swallowing, and hair-flipping, back-bending rock ‘n’ roll.
By Sean McGoey
arts@c-ville.com
Star Wars enthusiasts have a lot to be thrilled about this year: The first trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker dropped in April, setting the table for the conclusion of the latest trilogy and sparking speculation over the inclusion of Emperor Palpatine’s sinister laugh at the end of the trailer. And the television series “The Mandalorian,” a space opera web series set in the Star Wars universe, is predicted to be one of the centerpieces of Disney’s new streaming service. But those new projects will require patience. “The Mandalorian” doesn’t air until November, and The Rise of Skywalker debuts on December 20.
Here in Charlottesville, fans of Star Wars and other science fiction can get their fix when IX Art Park hosts the sixth annual May the Fourth Be With You show, where local bands pay homage to the music of sci-fi movies, songs about aliens and lasers, and campy pop tunes from movies and TV shows.
The bands on the roster all share a love of science fiction and fantasy. Stray Fossa frontman Nick Evans recalls dressing as Star Wars characters for Halloween with his brother Will, the band’s drummer, and reading Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary. And Little Graves’ bassist Les Whittaker is a self-proclaimed “total nerd,” citing Ridley Scott’s 1982 epic Blade Runner and the books of William Gibson and John Steakley as favorites.
Goddess ov Mindxpansion’s lo-fi guitars and guttural vocals kick off the show, which will feature everything from YonderPhonics’ funky garage-jazz and Little Graves’ mixture of heavy post-punk and field recordings to the “dense bizarro rap” of dogfuck, who promoter Jeyon Falsini likes to refer to as “dog-friendly.”
“I am not sure if I am more excited to play or see what the other bands will do,” says Evans. Stray Fossa, who relocated from Sewanee, Tennessee, to Charlottesville last year after a multi-year hiatus, will be playing its first May the Fourth show, as will closing act Astronomers.
“The show’s date finally falling on a Saturday and Astronomers headlining is a solid pairing of circumstances,” says master of ceremonies Rupert Quaintance. “We’ve approached them in the past but their schedule never lined up. They’re a crowd favorite. …Even their name lends itself to the aesthetic.”
May the Fourth Be With You is Quaintance’s brainchild. He has partnered with Falsini’s booking and promotion company, Magnus Music, to host the event since 2014. “I wanted there to be an event where people can just zone out into their own brand of nerdiness and feel unabashed about it,” Quaintance says. May 4, which happens to be Quaintance’s birthday, is known by fans as Star Wars Day, but the pair put their own spin on the Charlottesville event. Falsini says they made covers of science fiction- themed songs a requirement to be in the lineup from the very beginning in 2014.
This will be the second May the Fourth since The Ante Room —along with Escafé and the Main Street Arena—closed to make way for the Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, and that still hits a raw nerve for people who miss the inclusive concert venue.
“I can’t say enough about The Ante Room,” Quaintance says. “[Jeyon] had the wherewithal and gumption to open The Ante Room to metal acts and hip-hop events and all sorts of lovely, eclectic things.”
“We were in a really good groove with that space,” says Falsini, who owned The Ante Room since it opened as The Annex in 2012. “But at the end of the day, Charlottesville…just needs stability when it comes to its music venues if it intends to keep fostering the musical arts.”
Despite the lingering disappointment over that space’s closing, an air of optimism surrounds not just May the Fourth, but the music scene in Charlottesville, in no small part due to the presence of welcoming, communal spaces like IX and the efforts of the people who work to keep the scene vibrant and inclusive.
“I’m super thankful for the efforts of folks like Jeyon Falsini, Angel Metro, and Sam Roberts, who do look out for local weirdo musicians and put together the kinds of shows that probably wouldn’t even be a consideration elsewhere,” says Little Graves’ guitarist/sampler Luis Soler.
But it requires more than just the efforts of hardworking bookers and promoters.
“Supporting those people and places usually means more than just showing up,” Soler said. “It’s also an opportunity for people to get in on the ground floor and make things happen, think outside the box, and evolve the scene into its next incarnation. Gotta be the change you want to see, right?”
May The Fourth Be With You takes place May 4 at IX Art Park
Girl Choir is distortion driven. The Chuggernauts opt for a punk-rock pirate vibe. And while The Unholy Four strives for old-school hard rock, Wild Rose keeps it modern as a quartet. Expect a blend of grit and tenderness when punk rock meets punk ‘n’ roll during an evening with these four local bands.
Lady Sag, as in Sagittarius, doesn’t follow the average hip-hop path. She’s all about the signs, branching out, and alternating between gospel, ballads, and country songs. As one of 10 featured local artists in New Year, New Vibes with Bam Bam, Sav, Tae Da God, and Tavi, Lady Sag says we can look forward to music based on experience. The audience can bask in good local hip-hop, artists supporting artists, and live DJ Chris Newman’s perfectly timed jokes between sets.
Vocalist Tonia Ray and the T Ray Band bring joy to the season during An Evening of Neo-Soul. With a range of influences from jazz, funk, hip-hop, and electronic to pop, fusion, and African music, the group promises a high-energy set of holiday-themed favorites that will get you moving, while helping others, at this benefit for We Code,Too.
It’s a Saturday morning in Richmond, and L.E. Zarling has ordered a chocolate croissant to go with her latte at Lamplighter Coffee. She looks at the pastry, covered in a heavy-handed sprinkle of powdered sugar. Then she looks at her black turtleneck sweater. “Fuck it,” she says before taking a bite. “I’m going to enjoy the hell out of this thing.”
This sort of just-go-with-it-and-own-it-while-you’re-at-it attitude is the way Milwaukee-born and Richmond-based comedy performer and instructor L.E. (Lilith Elektra) Zarling approaches most things in life. It’s certainly how she approaches comedy, which she brings to IX Art Park on Thursday, in the form of a two-hour improvisational workshop geared toward trans and non-binary people. After the workshop, Zarling will perform her one-person improv show, Wisconsin Laugh Trip.
Zarling started in comedy in 2003, when she was 33 years old. She realized that if she was the one with the mic, everyone in the room had to listen to her; and she wanted to be heard. A few years later, while living in Charlottesville, she pivoted to improv comedy and storytelling, where it’s always something new.
“The level of control that [improvisational comedy] brought to my life, being on stage and being an improviser, where you just have to go” and let go, rocked her world. Over time, performing helped Zarling, a trans woman, find her own voice and be completely honest with herself and her audience about who she is.
“I finally unscrewed the jar and let my real self out,” she says.
To hear Zarling talk about her life in comedy is to witness an animated retelling of some of her favorite performances. There’s the time she made a little kid laugh so hard, he puked (“I should have just retired then and there,” she quips). And the time when she led her 60-person audience in an impromptu singing of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” where some audience members got so into it, Zarling handed the stage over to them. During that sing-along, she realized that being “in the middle of this happiness” is her dream.
Zarling’s workshops and shows are about community, positivity, and having fun, but within that, she does some pretty serious work.
Most spaces in the U.S., theaters and comedy clubs included, are not queer-friendly, says Zarling, and she hopes to change that, even if it’s just making venues (such as IX) more aware of the importance of having gender-neutral bathrooms. She holds improv workshops geared toward trans- and non-binary people to say “you are welcome here,” in this physical space and in this artistic space. There’s a lot of confidence to be found in “having an audience and holding it and having people interested in what you have to say,” she says.
“Comedy is your chance to be in front of people, to have your voice and say what you feel,” says Zarling. “Yes, there are forces trying to work against you. But no matter who the president is, that doesn’t stop you from making your friends’ lives better. That doesn’t stop you from reaching out and making your community better,” even in seemingly small ways.
When Zarling performs, she doesn’t talk much about being trans. “When you’re a performer, there are things you want to talk about…[and] being trans is sometimes the least interesting thing about me,” she says. She has a vibrant social life and loves to travel (so far this year, she’s visited Dublin and Belfast, Ireland, and driven across the continental U.S. twice); she teaches improv for business; every summer, she runs the comedy unit at a weeklong leadership camp in Alabama for kids ages 10 to 18.
But, she’s aware that in many cases, she’s the first trans person some of her audience members will get to know, and when they leave, this little piece of her will leave with them. At the very least, “they’ll be like, ‘Okay, maybe trans people just want to go pee?’” she says with a laugh.
At the show, Charlottesville fans can expect a bunch of characters, created with help from the audience. There will likely be a blind taste test (of…something), definitely a sing-along to the Violent Femme’s “Blister in the Sun” (“Wisconsin’s most famous band,” says Zarling), and a bit formed around a character created from a prop that Zarling will find in a local thrift store the day of the performance.
The thrifted prop bit has proven to Zarling that with comedy, she’s accomplishing exactly what she hopes.
While performing the show in California, she found a luchador mask and created a character called the Luchador Life Coach. “Who hates their job?!” she yelled out to the audience. A woman raised her hand—she was a paralegal dreaming of being a costume designer. “Who needs a costume designer?!” the Luchador Life Coach yelled. Four or five people raised their hands—one of them, a burlesque dancer, gave the paralegal her card. Zarling returned to that same comedy group about a year later, hoping to see the paralegal—but the woman couldn’t make it; she was working on a costume for one of her design clients.
Now Zarling doesn’t just say she changes lives through comedy—she knows she actually does it. “I have tangible evidence!” she cries, throwing her arms to the sides, sending a small cloud of powdered sugar onto her black sweater. But she doesn’t even notice—she’s just going with it.
For North American Sake Brewery co-owner Jeremy Goldstein, it wasn’t a trip to Japan but a visit back home to California that inspired his new venture.
“I’d never had ‘craft’ sake, but I went to this amazing restaurant with a sake sommelier and had a whole different experience than I’d had before with the heated stuff, or sake bombs,” he says. “It was like drinking a really nice craft beer or craft cocktail.”
The experience lingered in his mind, and once back in Charlottesville he mentioned it to his friend Andrew Centofante, who’d dabbled in brewing.
The two sought out some good bottles of sake, and Centofante says it was love at first sip. “One night, maybe I drank a couple too many and I looked at the glass and I looked at Jeremy and said, ‘how do you make this stuff?’”
Centofante researched some home-brew recipes and started cooking it up in his basement. He gave the first batch to friends, who enjoyed it, then brewed another, and another. “I had two batches going at once, then three and then five,” Centofante recalls. “It was then Jeremy and I decided this was a cool thing we liked doing and could be a unique opportunity for a business.”
The men then visited every U.S. sake brewery they could find, 14 in total. “There are so few of us, it’s kind of a niche crowd,” Centofante says. “It’s nice to be able to talk to others about the brewing process and learn from them.”
Goldstein says they were thrilled to find a space at IX, and business has been booming, with over a thousand patrons coming through during the recent Tomtoberfest event. Luckily they had plenty of sake on hand.
“We go through about 6,000 pounds of rice every month,” Goldstein says. “We’re one of the larger independent sake brewers in North America and we have a lot of different types, including the traditional unfiltered, or cloudy, nigori style, and infusions with fruit and peppers.” There’s even a new, hyper-local variation made with pawpaw foraged from the Monticello trail.
To compliment the drinks, the pair have brought in chef Peter Robertson, who with his wife, Merrill, owns the popular Côte-Rôtie food truck (which Merrill is now operating on her own). Goldstein says Robertson has long had a passion for Japanese cuisine.
“He’s bringing a little Southern style and American style to his cuisine, just like what we’re doing with the sake,” he says. “We have a 330-gallon smoker, so we do Asian smokehouse and our own pastramis and pork. He makes fresh bao buns daily, and we do rice bowls.”
Centofante, who worked in branding before opening the restaurant, has enjoyed applying those skills to the business as well. “Not only do I get to be very hands-on and physical in making sake, but I get to make my own brand and guide my own brand,” he says. “I get to flex different muscles in my brain.”
He wants to help customers discover a new side of sake, the same way he did: “Let me open your eyes to this wonderful beverage that is historic and culturally significant,” he says. “And hopefully you’ll fall in love like I did.”
Restaurateur Andy McClure announced plans to bring a little bit of France to Belmont this January, when he plans to open a French bistro in the old La Taza Restaurant space. McClure, whose Virginia Restaurant Company empire includes The Virginian, The Biltmore, Citizen Burger Bars in three locations, and Citizen Bowl, plans to expand the space while maintaining the charm and familial feel. He lives in Belmont, and he says he’s had his eye on the spot for years.
“I have always loved this space,” he says. “I think it’s one of the prettiest and coolest restaurant settings in town. I heard a rumor that the building was changing hands and it was an opportunity I could not pass up.”
McClure says he’s still deciding precisely how to execute the transformation, but has some ideas.
“It will definitely have coffee, fast casual breakfast, and snacks in the La Taza space. And I will most likely do something different in the cabinet space.” That part of the building was home to contractor Jeff Easter’s remodeling business. McClure says he’s looking at potential brewery partners to add a beer garden outpost.
He adds that he wants to ensure the restaurant maintains the cachet La Taza was known for. “Staying true to what is great about Belmont is the primary goal,” he says. “I want nothing more than to add to the cool and laid-back neighborhood vibe that Belmont owns.”
If you really want to move people, get them dancing together. That’s the thinking behind the Charlottesville world dance festival Zaltandi, a collaboration between Soul of Cville, IX Art Park, The Charlottesville Salsa Club, The Dance Spot, Zabor Dance Project, and a list of artists performing various dance styles from many ethnicities. The festival’s goal is “to demonstrate that our community is strong and thriving, because of our diversity and our desire to connect, share, understand, and harmonize,” and the good vibes culminate in a Dance for Equality.
When a band’s music is described as genre-defying, it often means its musicians are struggling to find a successful sound. In the case of Adar, the local singer-songwriter does transcend genres and her songs successfully incorporate several types of music—funk, rock, and jazz—to create a smooth, innovative blend of sounds. Virginia funk acts Funktional Electrik and Choose Your Own Adventure round out the show.