Tag: Live Music

When The Whiskey Jar opened in February at the west end of the Downtown Mall, it came as something of a surprise. After all, Escafé had held down that spot for 17 years and several owners, before a recent relocation. Seven months later, The Whiskey Jar has become a reliable regular destination for many Mall-goers.

The restaurant is co-owned by Will Richey and John Reynolds of Revolutionary Soup, along with Cary Carpenter, who sports what must easily be the most impressive mustache in town. In addition to delicious, locally sourced food and a wide selection of whiskey and other refreshments, the establishment has been adding live music to its menu. Josha McBee—an employee of no less than three Charlottesville restaurants-—has been handling the booking, with assistance from local promoter Jeyon Falsini. They’ve hosted live acts on weekends since opening, but starting this month the restaurant takes things to the next level with music six nights a week, and a trio of local performers sitting in with residencies every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

“The shows during the week are more like dinner music,” said Carpenter. “They start earlier, around 6pm,” which seems like a natural choice since the sizable late night crowds often grow loud enough to drown out quiet performers. The mellow mood of an early evening concert gives diners the chance to hear acts like the Rick Olivarez Trio, which boasts a strong local following for its performances in the C&O Bistro every Tuesday. “Having Rick Olivarez play here every Wednesday is phenomenal,” said Carpenter. “He’s just posted up in the window all evening, and everyone outside on the patio can hear too.”

Among the most impressive acts on the roster is Erik “Red” Knierim, a talented but reclusive local musician. Erik the Red— a tall, red-haired country boy, often sporting suspenders or pigtails—is an affable and charming presence, whose music seems like it could have come from another era. Knierim’s sensibility is distinctly un-modern. His dense Virginia drawl is so unlike most modern singers, his genuine kindness and enthusiasm seem unaffected by 21st century cynicism, and his original blues songs about his own life, detailing work as a stonemason, pining for a departed sweetheart, and trying to keep foxes away from the chicken coop, seem both old-fashioned and timeless. I had to dig out a Charlottesville High School yearbook from 1997 to verify that Erik the Red was, in fact, the same person as the Erik Knierim I half-remembered from 15 years ago.

Adding to his mystique, and fueling no shortage of rumors, Knierim can be elusive and unpredictable, though always genuinely friendly. There is little to no information about his music available on the internet, none of his recordings have been released (with the exception of a single song that appeared as a bonus track on a 2005 Corn-
dawg album), he has no functioning e-mail address, and can only be reached by landline. For several years he would often be added to a concert bill at the last minute, or talked onto the stage for a short set if he happened to be present. Listeners are always charmed by his songs and stories, but it’s difficult for anyone, including eager show promoters, to know when or if they might hear from him next. Thus, the prospect of being able to hear Erik the Red every Monday is something of a treasure for Charlottesville music aficionados, and no small feat for The Whiskey Jar’s music bookers. “That was kind of random, actually” says Carpenter. “Betty Jo, who sings with Erik, does all of our flower arranging, so I think that’s how that got put together.”

Erik the Red, the Ragged Mountain String Band, and the Rick Olivarez Trio will perform at The Whiskey Jar every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, respectively, through the month of September. While it’s not clear if those specific performers will continue in the coming months, Carpenter said the plan is to invite musicians to perform in weeknight residences, perhaps in a rotating selection. Whatever the outcome, The Whiskey Jar is solidifying its reputation as a spot for the discerning downtowner. “I wanted a place where I could hang out, drink whiskey, and listen to good music,” says Carpenter, “and now that’s what we do here every night.”

Latte gazing

Music fans of the ’90s first encountered British folk singer Beth Orton through her collaborations with The Chemical Brothers, an unlikely but successful pairing. On songs like “Where Do I Begin,” Orton lent subtlety and grace to albums that elsewhere threatened to become overbearingly bombastic. She also released several fine solo albums, and gained a faithful musical following in her own right.

If Orton’s fame has waned slightly in recent years (it’s frequently necessary to remind casual listeners that she’s not the same person as Beth Gibbons, the singer of Portishead), her music has aged well, and stood the test of time far better than much of that played in coffee shops throughout the ’90s. Orton has thus far released just one album over the past decade, but it’s a fine one: 2006’s Comfort of Strangers, produced by the omnipresent Jim O’Rourke, which eschewed formerly trendy trip-hop beats for stripped-down, more traditional folk instrumentation. Her newest, Sugaring Season, is due out in early October.

Beth Orton will appear at the Jefferson Theater on September 24. Tickets are $20-23, and the doors open at 7pm. Sam Amidon opens.

Have your say. Drop a line to mailbag@c-ville.com, send a letter to 308 E. Main St., or post a comment at c-ville.com.

Gregg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, is unapologetic about his art. The former biomedical engineer spends hours, days, months listening, capturing, and cataloging the work of other musicians—storing up thousands of samples that he then repurposes into new genius like some mad scientist digital composer. As Girl Talk, he puts on aerobically charged, frenetic, live laptop performances full of props and fist pumps, and his sample-obsessed recordings are offered through his own tongue-in-cheek label Illegal Art.

C-VILLE spoke to Gillis by phone about listening through to the end, the cool kids, and fair use. Girl Talk performs at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion on Wednesday.

CVILLE Weekly: You have your own day in Pittsburgh, Gregg Gillis Day on December 7. How do you celebrate it?

Gregg Gillis: “When it was announced, I celebrated by sleeping all day on the couch. I did eat at Primanti’s, which is the iconic sandwich shop in Pittsburgh, so if I had to give a suggestion to people, it would be to drink an I.C. Light beer and eat a Primanti’s sandwich. And if you want to do it up big time, wear a Steelers shirt that day.”

Talk a little about your creative process. Has it changed as you’ve grown in popularity?

“The techniques are actually pretty similar. I more or less cut up samples in Adobe Audition, that’s where I’m isolating things and chopping things up, then AudioMulch is what I perform live on, where I am able to arrange all the samples and trigger loops, where I come up with the arrangement.”

“I am spending a lot of time preparing the tools to use. When I start an album, it may be after two years of working out ideas in the show, so I have an idea of 75 percent of the material—‘it’s gonna start here, it’s gonna go here’—and then there’s little holes or gaps, but I try to flush out all ideas rather than to make it up on the spot.”

There appears to be real purpose when it comes together as a record.

“There is definitely a timing—it’s a ride. I think I have a journey that’s important, and definitely for the albums I want it to be a whole experience, you know, listening to the whole thing in one setting if possible and have that be enjoyable.”

Do you listen to albums in their entirety? 

(Laughs) “I do a little bit. I still listen to music the way I always have, even out on tour, just popping in a CD and listening to the end. This is still my favorite way to do it as opposed to downloading a bunch of songs and checking them out individually.”

What is the last album you listened to?

“We listened to Chicago 6 and Big K.R.I.T.’s Live from the Underground.”

 You’ve become an icon among the cool kids after eschewing them for years. Is there personal satisfaction in that?

“I would say there is a sense of pride for me or satisfaction sometimes when I’m invited to play some of the festivals and I’m the guy up there playing Kelly Clarkson samples. When I get lumped in with that crowd that is critically well-received, and I’ve kind of openly embraced many things that they have made a living shitting on, there is some weird, ironic perverted pleasure in that.”

Some industry legals would love to defend you in a fair use case because they believe it would be high-profile and clear-cut. Do you have any desire to put the issue to rest?

“You know, I believe in what I’m doing. I don’t want to go to court, but I definitely believe in it and I would be curious to say the least. You know, just to see how it would be received by a judge, or by the public or how it would then be portrayed in the mainstream media.”

“It seems like in the music underground a lot of people have been supportive, so the project has been put in a pretty positive light. Maybe if it broke through that mainstream level, maybe the media would depict me as some sort of renegade criminal trying to rip people off.”

“People who study the music industry are really interested in, and get, the perspective that I’m pushing. You know that it’s not causing any harm. That it is transformative.”

Has there been a reversal where artists approach you to be included in your work?

“Yeah, people have definitely been. More on the underground level, people are always pushing stuff and I love checking out new music. Over the years, I have gotten to know a number of A&R people at major labels or managers who are directly connected to people I’ve sampled, saying ‘check out this a cappella song or instrumental or here’s the new single.’ That’s pretty frequent. I wouldn’t want to name names because I don’t know whose boss’ boss knows this is happening.”

Do you have memories from previous Charlottesville shows?

“I remember my first Charlottesville show pretty well. I was on tour with Dan Deacon and we were having a crazy run. Dan got really sick and had to cancel [his part of] that show, and I remember thinking it was a great idea—not because the [Satellite Ballroom] show wasn’t cool, but because it ended up one of the rowdier shows—really chaotic and really hot and walking that line of almost falling apart. You know, like something’s going to come unplugged, damaged, but nothing happened and it was all good. That one sticks out from that tour actually.”

Girl Talk/September 19 at 7pm/nTelos Wireless Pavilion 

The seductive croon, skilled guitar, and catchy lyrics of Mississippi folk rocker Charlie Mars would be enough to establish his talent and sex appeal. Tack on the devilish good looks, designer threads, and longtime relationship with “Weeds” star Mary Louise Parker to emphasize his stylish mystique. Mars passes through to promote the release of his new record, Blackberry Light, while supporting Steve Earle.

Sunday 9/16.  $39.50-45, 8pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 245-4980.

The songs of Patterson Hood often tell vivid stories, even if they’re not always about the brightest subjects. Over a decade and a half and nine studio albums later, the Drive-By Truckers frontman has tackled rural economic plight, cancer clusters, and killing a banker to avoid foreclosure. His modern gothic tales are usually enhanced by the Truckers’ loudly distorted three-guitar attack. It’s interesting, then, to hear the underground Southern rock icon tone down his raspy howl and get personal on his new solo album, Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance.

The reflective effort came out of Hood’s attempt to write a book, a fictionalized account of a pre-Truckers dark period in his life, when he was an admittedly suicidal, recently divorced, struggling musician. When the concept better manifested in song, Hood contrasted the turbulent tales with lighter tunes about his current existence as a successful—albeit road-weary—happily married father of two. With songs in place, the Athens, Georgia-based Hood called on a stout cast of musicians to record the album. In addition to fellow Truckers members Brad Morgan (drums) and Jay Gonzalez (keys), he’s assisted by his dad, longtime Muscle Shoals session bassist David Hood, songstress Kelly Hogan and Will Johnson of Centro-matic. Hood will bring his solo band the Downtown Rumblers to the Southern on Saturday night, and C-VILLE caught up with him by phone.

C-VILLE Weekly: Your songs often contain colorful stories, so it doesn’t seem like a stretch that you were working on a book. Why, in the end, did you decide to turn the book idea into a solo record?

Patterson Hood: “I was burned out on the road and homesick but still facing a long year of touring since the Truckers had just released Go Go Boots. I decided to use that time on the bus to write the book that had been in the back of my mind. I dove in and the first few chapters were going pretty quickly. Since the main character was a songwriter, I decided to write a song to put in-between each chapter. In the end I liked the songs more than what had been finished of the book.”

Is this your most autobiographical album?

“My songs on previous albums have been autobiographical, even when it’s not always obvious. When I’m writing about other people, there’s usually a connection even if I’m not directly involved in the story. This record, though, is definitely more direct. It’s either me at 27 or me at 47. I like the way those songs juxtapose back and forth. The song “Depression Era” was written with my great uncle in mind, since he passed away last fall. Much of this record is about the idea of losing the last part of that generation in my family, but at the same time having beautiful kids running around. It’s the passing of the torch.”

This record has a soulful, sparse quality. Were you trying to deviate from the usual Truckers sound?

“I first recorded these songs as demos on GarageBand in my home office, so from the beginning they were very sparse. The songs were sung quietly and at times almost whispered, so I wanted to retain that with a full band. I didn’t include any big lead guitar. I wanted this to sound intimate and personal, like a conversation. When I went to record, it happened probably quicker than anything I’ve ever done. I finished the record during the week I planned on starting it. Every day that I would go into the studio I would come out with two more songs finished.”

What can we expect at the Southern on Saturday?

“It’s a much quieter show than the Truckers do, so we’re trying to play smaller rooms on this tour. But the band is smoking good. It’s Brad and Jay from the Truckers both playing smaller, stripped-down set-ups, and Jacob Morris playing cello and bass. The opening act, Hope for Agoldensummer, is a band of two sisters from here in Athens that do amazing harmonies. We’re going to back them up for their set, and then they’re going to be part of the Downtown Rumblers.”

After the aforementioned troubled time in your life, you wrote 500 songs in a three-year period. Can you explain that kind of productivity?

“At that point, my life was more fucked up than usual. Writing was my life raft. I was young and my old band and marriage had broken up. I can’t do that any more, and it’s probably better that I don’t. My life is fuller now, and I don’t have the time. As a husband and father of two beautiful kids, I have to carve out specific writing time, because I would rather be with my family when I’m home. I think not writing as much as I used to is the sign of a happy ending.”

September 15 at 8pm/The Southern Café and Music Hall

In 2008, The Bridge PAI hosted a month of sound-related programming entitled Audio January. The next year, January seemed unfeasible, so the Belmont-based arts organization followed up with Audio February. The joke amongst Bridge staff was that the annual event would cycle through the months of the year, and for three successive years (including Audio March 2010 and Audio April 2011) that actually happened.

When Kevin Davis and Chris Peck, both graduate composers in UVA’s music department, took over the reins of the Bridge’s “noise committee” from departing Ph.D. student Jonathan Zorn, The Bridge proposed following up with Audio May. “We said, ‘May’s too busy, and the summer’s dead, so why don’t we just do Audio September?’” said Davis. With help from other UVA music students and Bridge volunteers they spent months assembling a calendar of events devoted to sound, including performances of jazz, rock, hip-hop, and experimental music, live readings of fiction and poetry, and radio broadcasts from the gallery.

Audio September also coincides with the centennial of John Cage, the 100th birthday of the influential thinker, composer, speaker, writer, performer, and mycologist whose avant-garde theories changed 20th century music—and fittingly, The Bridge chose Cage as the unofficial patron saint of the series. “Actually, there’s plenty of events that aren’t Cage-themed” said Peck. “When a lot of people celebrate Cage, it’s just chamber music. But we were really influenced by his philosophy, which had to do with things happening not just at a concert hall, but with sound everywhere.”

Discussing the guiding principles behind organizing the Audio September calendar, Davis said “The Bridge is a non-profit organization, and we wanted to bring things to town that wouldn’t necessarily work at a for-profit event, things that couldn’t happen anywhere else in town. We were focusing on things you wouldn’t necessarily hear at a rock concert, or at UVA. We’re excited by really good multimedia or sound installation art, something that happens in the space between an installation and a performance. The Bridge PAI is the perfect location for that.”

The two organizers are particularly excited about Chris Heenan, a contrabass clarinetist who performs with accordionist Jonas Kocher on Thursday, September 27, as well as Fred Moten, the theorist and poet whose September 22 appearance is being sponsored by the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American Studies and the UVA English Department. Another highlight is the work of Jason Ajemian, a double-bassist, composer, and former Waynesboro resident who has gone on to acclaim in the Chicago jazz scene, although these days he mostly lives on tour, performing solo, in duets and trios, and a variety of bands including Hush Arbors and Born Heller.

Ajemian’s music is wildly entertaining, but difficult to categorize, mixing elements of jazz, folk, pop, rock and experimental music. The parts are easily identifiable, but they add up to a whole that sounds totally unique. “We were excited to have Jason because he’s originally from around here,” said Davis, “and he has a really novel combination of Appalachian music and improvised music that you don’t really hear anywhere else.”

Last Friday, the Bridge hosted an art opening of Ajemian’s “graphical scores,” which he calls Teleport Tone Poems—a combination of traditional music scores and abstract visual illustrations, meant to be creatively interpreted by performers. Ajemian performed at the opening, and will appear again on Wednesday, September 12 with a large ensemble called the Breath Orchestra. A group of 15 musicians that play a wide variety of instruments, as Davis explained, performing “patterns of music based on the length of a human breath,” rather than a fixed time signature.

“A big question facing music today is how to deal with chaos of individuals,” wrote Ajemian. “First thing to do is to embrace that chaos within yourself. Musically, this is the style of each musician. What I’m trying to do is let that style express itself. In other words, letting people be themselves in chaos. It’s not music, it’s a moment of shared chaos.”

The Audio September calendar is also impressive for its wide range of performers and styles, including last Sunday’s prose and poetry reading, part of an ongoing monthly series entitled Scheherazade, and the upcoming Hip Hop Showcase on September 15, featuring students and alumni from the Music Resource Center, the after-school program that has mentored generations of young Charlottesville musical talent.

Audio September continues through the month with a closing party on Saturday, September 29. Most events are either $5 or free, and a full schedule is available online at www.thebridgepai.com.

Have your say. Drop a line to mailbag@c-ville.com or send a letter to 308 E. Main St.

Chris Corsano is one of most restlessly inventive of contemporary improvisers, a jazz drummer reminiscent of Max Roach, whose work is thoughtful and open-minded enough to collaborate with noise and rock musicians as well as more traditional hard bop players.

Corsano made his name as part of a loose scene from Northampton, Mass, attracting notice for his duets with free jazz saxophonist and living legend Paul Flaherty, but he’s also spent significant time in the UK and collaborated with artists ranging from Jim O’Rourke and Thurston Moore to Björk.

But his best work might be his solo improvisations; LPs like the Young Cricketer and Another Dull Dawn list percussions instruments such as “toy gamelan,” “pot lids,” “baritone sax mouthpiece on a 2-foot metal pipe,” and “metal strips from windshield wipers and street cleaners’ bristles,” often played simultaneously.

Chris Corsano will appear at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar on Monday, September 10th, with several local opening acts including Dais Queue, Nue Depth, and a duet of Golden Glasses and Matt Northrup. The cover charge is $7 and the concert begins at 9:00pm.

Here’s a video of a performance from Corsano’s upcoming solo album, Cut:

I can vividly remember hearing Dan Deacon for the first time. His debut full-length album, released in the spring of 2007 (with the unfortunate title of Spiderman of the Rings) begins with a dense burst of buzzing electronic harmonies and sampled Woody Woodpecker sound-effects, and I was instantly a fan. Deacon’s music is exuberant and impossible to ignore—dense, rhythmic and filled with chirping and chiming. It’s laughably absurd and infectiously ridiculous, but too finely crafted and unforgettably unique to be dismissed as a novelty.

Tracks like “Crystal Cat” and “Snake Mistakes” retain the basic skeleton of a pop/ rock song (albeit the kind of song a hyperactive 4-year-old would write), but deeper cuts like “Big Milk” and “Pink Batman” reveal an almost-perfect ear for melodic composition and counterpoint, reminiscent of electronic founding fathers such as Kraftwerk, Raymond Scott and Jean-Jacques Perrey. He’s got the serious mind of a composer (with an actual degree in composition) and the soul of a lovable class clown (he’s perhaps the only contemporary artist who can successfully cover Bobby Darrin’s “Splish Splash”), and he’s able to combine his skills in the service of a larger musical vision.

I was able to catch one of his early performances in Baltimore. The phrase on everyone’s lips was “Wham City,” the short-lived Baltimore warehouse and performance art space of which Deacon was a co-founder, but also the title of Spiderman’s much-loved centerpiece, a 12-minute epic that frequently breaks down into a chipmunk-chirping choir singing a preposterous paragraph-long chant describing a fantasy party. It’s the most outlandish and attention-getting moment on the record, and the biggest source of anticipation among the crowd that night was if, and how, Deacon would perform it live. He did, and the solution was that Deacon distributed photocopied lyrics sheets so that the crowd, enamored with the album, the song, and the myth of Wham City, could form a chorus and perform together (we did). Many were Baltimore concert regulars, others (like me) were outsiders, strangers who had come from out-of-town for a festival, but for the duration of Deacon’s performance it felt like we had formed a community.

Deacon’s brilliance as a performer is that he’s able to take that sense of community with him everywhere he goes, building it from scratch in a new town in each night, starting over at the beginning of every performance. He has been ambitiously busy in recent years. The sophomore album, Bromst, managed the not-insignificant feat of sounding more somber and mature while also containing a song whose melody is performed by synthesized woofing and meowing sound effects. He’s been invited to perform serious orchestral works in classical music venues, led a DIY stand-up comedy tour, released a video collaboration with Baltimore artist Jimmie Joe Roche (Ultimate Reality, a musical epic set to appropriate footage from 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger films), and has scored a horror film by Francis Ford Coppola (2011’s Twixt, which has yet to see a wide release).

During his last appearance in Charlottesville, a 2010 concert at The Southern, Deacon set up his card table of gear in the middle of the audience, and asked for all the venue lights to be extinguished—he’d brought his own lighting rig, too (including a few strobes). As he performed songs both familiar and fresh, he led the sweaty crowd through a strenuous series of simple synchronized dance routines, culminating in a finale in which every member of the audience formed a circle and held hands, before acrobatically turning the circle inside-out.

It sounds like a child’s game or a corporate team-building exercise on paper, but at a concert it was a joyful revelation, a temporary disbanding of the rules of a “rock show.” At one point the 7′ tall, black-clad, severely pierced gentleman whose hand I was tasked with holding exclaimed “Wait, a minute, this is just like gym class!” in a tone indicating both skepticism and wonder, but soon enough he—along with every other person in the room—joined in and was giggling with glee as the crowd formed a tunnel that extended out the venue’s fire exit, down the street, and back in the front door.

Dan Deacon will perform at the Jefferson on Saturday, September 8 to promote his third album America, out now on Domino Records. Last week, it was announced that Deacon’s tour will make use of a mobile phone app that will turn the crowd’s phones into a spontaneous light show during the concert. He will be making his first appearance in Charlottesville with a full ensemble, and is supported by three Baltimore-based opening acts: Height With Friends, Chester Endersby Gwazda, and Alan Resnick. Tickets are $12 in advance or $15 at the door.

Now in its 13th season, the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival has become a local institution: a fortnight’s worth of nationally and internationally renowned composers and performers sharing the most intimate and contemplative form of music stretching back through centuries of western civilization. It has been said that chamber music is a conversation amongst friends, so we spoke via e-mail with former Charlottesville resident and Charlottesville High School grad, one of the festival’s co-founders, the internationally renowned cellist Raphael Bell (via e-mail).

C-VILLE: What can newcomers to the festival expect to find? What will festival frequenters find unique or interesting about this year’s festival?

Raphael Bell: “I think the audiences that come to the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival each year love the festival for many reasons, but mostly for the dynamic and engaging performances given by some of the most exciting and interesting musicians we know from both Europe and the USA. There is always a good mix of returning musicians that the public can look forward to hearing again, and new musicians coming for the first time. The players this year come to Charlottesville from New York, London, Paris, and Berlin, as well as Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Seattle. The musicians always love Charlottesville and the atmosphere surrounding the Festival. They are often surprised to find an American city with such a charming Downtown, full of cafés and restaurants, bookstores and galleries.”

In its 13th year, how do you keep the festival growing?

“Having a weekday lunch concert Downtown is something we have thought about doing for a long time, and the opportunity this year seemed right with the [Celebrate!250] anniversary, where we thought we could give something back to our city and to the supportive audience in Charlottesville. I hope there will be a good turnout for it, and hope that some people who have never attended the Festival will come check us out. I think if they do, they will be pleasantly surprised by the fantastic musicians who come to Charlottesville to play.”

A free concert is likely to bring in folks who might be new to the festival or chamber music in general; what considerations did you make when choosing the program of music for the Paramount show?

“For this particular concert we found a little piece written by Mozart that was dedicated to Queen Charlotte after visiting and performing for her in London in 1764. He wrote it when he was eight years old! The program follows this with some Variations by Beethoven on a theme from Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute”, written at the end of Mozart’s life, then a gorgeous piece by Schumann for viola and piano called Marchenbilder, and a wonderful and rarely heard piano quartet by Carl Maria von Weber.”

As an internationally touring musician, what is the process of setting up a festival like this every year? 

“I love finding pieces that the audience has never heard before, and I think it is fantastic when people come out of a concert and their favorite piece was the one from the composer they had never heard of! In this case, it’s a relatively unknown 19th century piece, but this thrill is also special when we’re talking about new pieces from contemporary composers. I think the festival has been great over the years at introducing new music, and often these performances are the ones that people continue to speak to me about years later. There is lots of great stuff to look forward to in this year’s festival, both old and new, and I can’t wait to get home and get it started.”

Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival/September 9-23/Info at www.cvillechambermusic.org