Tag: Live Music

Live music is one of the best aspects of life in Charlottesville, as each day of the week offers concerts in all genres from both local and touring musicians. Any personalized “best of” list is sure to be biased and idiosyncratic, but here are some of the most memorable musical experiences I have enjoyed since last year’s Best of C-VILLE issue:

Last August, James McNew (a member of college radio stalwarts Yo La Tengo) returned to his hometown for a rare appearance with his solo project Dump, a band which has played fewer than 20 shows in 20 years. McNew did not disappoint the Tea Bazaar audience, which included luminaries of Charlottesville’s musical past, including Girl Choir, a new band of C’ville rock veterans making its debut that night.

Ben Chasny, a.k.a. Six Organs of Admittance, played a superb set of solo acoustic guitar instrumentals at The Southern in August, but even better was the stellar performance by opening act Mss., debuting its six-piece live band. Mss. somewhat improbably covered songs from Lungfish and Gordon Lightfoot, and made them its own.

Speaking of Lungfish, two members of the defunct Baltimore group commuted down to Al-Hamraa for a concert last August. Asa Osborne now plays as Zomes, channeling hypnotically simple keyboard melodies that manage to sound low-fi in person. Daniel Higgs played electrified banjo ragas that were equal parts India and Appalachia. His set was instrumental and stone-cold serious until he elicited giggles by leaning into the mic mid-song and inquiring of the audience, “Has anyone seen that new Planet of the Apes movie?”

Frank Fairfield not only plays music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he seems like a gentleman time-traveler from that era. His early September performance at The Garage was charming and enlightening, and he made an encore appearance at the Tea Bazaar the following night, this time with local mountain man Eric the Red.

The Pigeon Hole hosted a wild musical brunch on the afternoon of September 30: Errantry cleansed the palate with ambient guitar tones, Harrisonburg’s Rubgy played charmingly dorky piano-rock, Nurse Beach made a furiously aggressive racket, and Great Dads played one of its finest sets of raw, catchy prog-punk. The afternoon culminated in an extended performance of the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray,” in which all of the musicians and audience members were invited to join in.

Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum made headlines around the world with his return to performing last year, but his former bandmate Julian Koster has been staging a much quieter comeback for years with The Music Tapes, a group that tours every Christmas performing only at house parties—sometimes in three or four neighboring towns in a single evening. Koster was both charmingly eccentric and refreshingly down-to-earth during his early-December appearance in a small Ridge Street apartment, as he told tall tales and played a mix of wintry originals and eclectic covers with his trio of Athens bandmates.

The Charlottesville Jazz Society brought a number of notables to town this year, including percussionist Han Bennink and his partner Mary Oliver, who were joined by a variety of locals including Darrell Rose, for a concert on the eve of Bennink’s 70th birthday. The sold-out concert was held at Brooks Hall, which amusingly also held a large papier-maché Mastadon that evening. (“That Mamoose has such grand toosks,” the Dutch-born Bennink remarked.)

Another fine contemporary improvisational drummer, Tatsuya Nakatani, made his annual return to Charlottesville on May 8 for a concert at The Bridge PAI with his well-worn drum kit, a variety of found percussion instruments (including a few kitchen utensils), and five gigantic gongs. Nakatani generously demonstrated a few of his techniques to the audience afterward, but his performance still seems akin to magic: watching a man conjure immense and fascinating sounds with a few pieces of metal and wood.

Finnish folk singer Saara Markannen visited The Garage in June, a perfect venue for her gentle, whimsical songs. For a finale, she gamely attempted to lead the hillside audience through a sing-a-long in Finnish, despite being the only native speaker present. The crowd’s hilarious failure was a lighthearted conclusion to a lovely evening of outdoor music.

These are but a few moments in a year full of concerts large and small. There are many more I could include: the elegant guitar loops of Dustin Wong; the precise grooves of the Chicago band Cave; Elisa Ambrosio’s nearly unrecognizable back-to-back appearances in 200 Years and Magik Markers; or the carefully composed soundscapes of Mountains. Everyone’s “best of” list is different. What does yours sound like?

Wilco is in a good place. The band’s near-two-decade slog through the music world has had its fair share of adversity: addiction, line-up shuffles, and a gut-punch rejection from Reprise Records of what turned out to be its most successful album (2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot). Now, the band has held the same crew together for the past seven years—a dynamic sextet that has solidified the group’s evolution from alt-country pioneers to big-stage experimental rock heroes.

An encompassing tour of the group’s sonic tastes was released last fall in its eighth studio album, The Whole Love. The effort runs the gamut of Wilco’s broadly constructed cosmic Americana. From to the sunny pop-rock title track to Nels Cline’s explosive free-form guitar licks in the off-kilter opener “Art of Almost,” to the wandering, finger-picked 12-minute folk meditation “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend),” the group found plenty of different aural avenues for the ever-expanding songbook of front man Jeff Tweedy.

Bassist John Stirratt, the band’s only remaining original member besides Tweedy, took questions by phone before Wilco’s return to the nTelos Wireless Pavilion on Thursday.

C-VILLE Weekly: When I first heard The Whole Love, the immediate impression was that it was all inclusive of the sounds Wilco has touched on over the years. Did the band have this sense as well?

John Stirratt: “There was an idea that the record didn’t have a linear quality from a sound standpoint—the way Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or A Ghost is Born did. That’s a challenge we wanted to take on—making something sprawling that’s all over the map, but still a great listening experience. We tried to not be afraid to present songs that might seem incongruous to other people.”

How does the band determine if a song should be more experimental or straightforward?

“That’s all part of the work. We generally move forward until we’re all enjoying a song. Often, there are different threads that seem to present themselves during recording sessions. We’ll start doing some spacey country stuff, which yielded “Open Mind” and “Jane Smiley” on this album. Generally, we reach a point on a song where we’re comfortable, and at that point we know there’s no other way to present it.”

Would you say the band is in the most stable place it’s ever been as far as the line-up?

“Without a doubt, having this line-up together for the past seven years has allowed us to get really deep, especially from a live standpoint. It can be daunting when you’re making a record, because we have so many options with this big of a band. But there’s so much musical empathy and everyone listens to each other; we’re in a really good spot right now.”

You’ve played a staggering number of shows over the years, and your road schedule has been pretty constant since releasing the latest album. What keeps it fresh from night to night?

“There’s a great culture and intensity around the fandom of the band. On a tiny level, it’s a little bit like what the Grateful Dead had. It’s great when people care that much. There’s a celebration existing outside of the band, and that vibe definitely keeps us inspired. The other thing is the catalog. Since we’ve been around for so long we can mix up the tunes and find new ways that songs work together. Little things like that can make a difference.”

Wilco had a well-publicized record label struggle. Was it a relief to start your own label and have that part of the equation removed from the business of making music?

“I don’t know if relief is the right word, because now it’s a lot more responsibility. We’re happy that we started the label, but it’s honestly the only way it can work. It’s great to have the creative freedom, but on the business end it’s challenging to sell records. We’re doing the best we can.”

What’s the plan after this touring cycle behind The Whole Love—back to other musical outlets like your band Autumn Defense with fellow Wilco member Pat Sansone?

“We had a big session with Autumn Defense earlier in the year, so we have a few things recorded. I think we’re sounding better than ever, and we’re planning to squeeze some more things in between Wilco dates. There are quite a few other projects on the table. Jeff is going to be working on another Mavis Staples record, and as the touring eases up next year Wilco will get back in the studio.”

At some point quite early in your long life it dawned on you that you had already written the words the world is going to want to see on your tombstone. That’s not a particularly easy thing to live with. You wrote them in the song “The Pilgrim: Chapter 33” about a rogues gallery of men you ran with or admired in the 1960s—Chris Gantry, Dennis Hopper, Jerry Jeff Walker, Johnny Cash—men who at the time were busy crucifying themselves on drugs and alcohol and bad behavior. Some of them, like you, found a way down off the cross. But the words stuck, and they still hang about you:

“He’s a poet, he’s a picker, he’s prophet, he’s a pusher

He’s a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he’s stoned.

He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth, partly fiction

Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home.”

Now, in retrospect, it seems like old tales about pills and the bottle are the least interesting thing about you. But when you’re Kris Kristofferson, even your least interesting feature is pretty damned interesting to the rest of us.

Let us count the ways: Rhodes scholar, boxer, degree in Literature from Oxford, trained as an Army helicopter pilot, Airborne Ranger, assigned to teach English at West Point. He then walked away from it all to move to Nashville to write country songs. For years he worked as a janitor in a recording studio, taking occasional stints flying choppers to oil platforms. He was on a long slow drive down the road to nowhere, but always refining his craft. He wrote some of the most recorded songs in country music history sitting on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico with barely a penny in his pocket, and his feet coming out the bottom of his shoes.

Kristofferson’s breakthrough came in 1970, after he landed a helicopter on Johnny Cash’s lawn and gave him a copy of the song “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” The stunt worked. Cash recorded it, and it topped the country charts, winning CMA Song of the Year. From there, the trajectory headed straight up. In 1972, three of the five Grammy nominees for Best Country Song were his. He won for the exquisitely crafted erotic ballad “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”

Rolling Stone called “Sunday Morning” “the greatest song ever written about a hangover.” It’s easy to see why. The first lines alone are quintessential country: “Well I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt. And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad, so I had one more for dessert.” The song shambles along for a couple of evocative, desolate verses. Then it does that gospel lift-off, with the music reaching for the rafters just as the words nosedive to the emotional bottom:

“And there’s nothing short of dyin’

Half as lonesome as the sound

Of a sleeping city sidewalk

Sunday morning comin’ down.”

With everything else he’s been—movie star, singer, Golden Globe winner (for A Star is Born), sex symbol, activist, hellion—it’s easy to forget that Kristofferson is among the best songwriters Nashville has ever produced. He’s penned at least a dozen that are now an indelible part of the country songbook: “For the Good Times,” “From the Bottle to the Bottom,” “To Beat the Devil,” “Loving Her Was Easier,” “Why Me.” “Me and Bobby McGee” belongs in the pantheon with a handful of the greatest American songs—right up there with “Over the Rainbow” and “Like a Rolling Stone”—each of them a meditation on freedom and longing.

His leftie activism has alienated a few people over the years. He once told Esquire magazine: “I’d be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.” Still, Nashville has never stopped recording his songs, and his country audience is finding its way back. Fans and critics are raving about the stripped-down concert act and the finely-honed writing and studio work of his latest albums. Once his songs were about freedom, loneliness and desolation. Now he writes minimalist, gem-like lyrics about transcendence and grace—laced right down among the sorrows of life.

For years, local music fans only knew Adam Brock as a drummer, the powerful force behind bands like The Nice Jenkins and Invisible Hand. But it’s always been clear that Brock was capable of more. His clear and exuberant singing voice added a perfect pop edge to his bands’ tunes, and his enthusiastic taste as a record collector ran towards the eclectic and the ornate end of the pop-rock spectrum: the Zombies, the Kinks, Sparks, and Harry Nilsson.

In 2009, Brock finally made his debut as a frontman, with a solo project called Borrowed Beams of Light. Over the past three years, this side project has included enough other members to qualify as a Charlottesville supergroup, and at its best threatens to overshadow the popularity of his other projects. The debut EP, followed by a split single and full-length album, won acclaim from many fellow musicians, as well as a devoted following among the rock DJs at WTJU.

The Beams are now preparing to release a new EP, a six-track record entitled Hot Springs. The list of studio personnel is an odd summation of the groups’ history; half the tracks were recorded by the original duo of Brock and his former Nice Jenkins bandmate Nate Walsh performing over simple drum machine backing—the remaining songs are fully fleshed out by the Beams’ current live band, which includes Jordan Brunk (another former Jenkin) and Marie Landragin of the retro-metal act Corsair, as well as Dave Gibson and Ray Szwabowski. The basic backing tracks were laid down at White Star Studios in Louisa County, and then fully fleshed out in smaller recording studios in the apartments and practice spaces of various band members.

For a record with such a patchwork recording history, Hot Springs is remarkably coherent; a testament to the consistency of Brock’s talent and aesthetic vision. His greatest skill as a songwriter and performer has always been the ability to put forward in odd, obscure, or downright impenetrable narrative conceits and conceptual whims in the form of breezy, largely unchallenging power-pop. Fancy breakdowns, odd turns of phrase and left turn bridges abound, but the end result is approachable and charming, even if they often sound more like an eclectic rock band playing with the idea of pop music than anything that might have actually appeared on the Billboard charts in the past 30 years.

The opening title track is bombastically catchy, with all of the manic hooks that Beams fans have grown to expect. “You’re such a lovely girl/to melt this awful snow!” Brock chatters, but it sounds less like a come-on than an insistence on the song’s own hook itself. “Wing Stroke” is stripped-down and simpler, but may be the record’s high point; yowling, yelping lines are interspersed with clear, straight-forward ones, as Brock wildly intones “I could waste my days in here/I might drink my weight in tears.” “Fine Lines” concludes the side with a credible soundalike of Roxy Music or vintage Bowie.

The B-side is more relaxed and glam-influenced, proving the band can still keep the quality control high even when they calm down a bit. Throughout, Marie Landragin’s harmonized guitar solos are the most anachronistic part of the record, but also the most enjoyable. Many of the songs are interspersed with confusing spoken-word snippets and vocal field recordings, never taking center stage but often adding texture and character. The EP concludes with “Simple Century,” which has a heavy early ’90s adult contemporary vibe. An aesthetic that I indelibly associate with “grocery store music”—which would almost be funny if they didn’t play it totally straight-faced; surprisingly, the style actually works to the song’s advantage.

This 45rpm 12″ record, issued by Harrisonburg-based Funny/Not Funny Records, is the Beams’ first vinyl-only release, though all copies come with an mp3 download code. “With a CD pressing, often the minimum amount you can do is in the thousands—and it’s actually cheaper in total to get, like 5,000 CDs than a few hundred.” Brock explains. “I just didn’t have it in me to fill the rest of my basement with another dozen boxes of unsold CDs.” Hot Springs is limited to 333 copies of the LP, but more download codes are planned; once the vinyl edition is depleted, the band may sell download cards featuring a miniature facsimile of the EP’s excellent cover art by prolific local artist and musician Thomas Dean.

Borrowed Beams opens for Dr. Dog at the Jefferson tonight. Brock relishes the idea of playing for a larger, potentially sold-out crowd: “There’s something nice about playing a bigger room. I think it works best for the type of music we’re playing. Plus, we’re all in our 30s now, and there’s only so many years of your life you can spend playing shows for three stoned kids in a living room and then crashing on the couch.” Although Hot Springs’ proper release date isn’t until August 14, those who have pre-ordered the record through Funny/Not Funny will be able to pick up their purchases at tonight’s show.

Robin Tomlin has one of the most recognizable voices in local radio. He barks a mile a minute in a rapid British accent, breathlessly reading back a list of obscure soul and funk songs on The Soulful Situation, his Monday afternoon radio show. Colin Powell (no relation to the former Secretary of State) is comparatively mild-mannered, but beneath his calm demeanor hides a razor-sharp wit and an impressive record collection. The talkative middle-aged British expatriate and the mild-mannered twenty-something American—both white—make an unusual pair. And they might not be the first act that comes to mind when you hear the phrase “classic American soul music.” But great music has a way of persisting through the ages, infecting even the most unexpected of devotees. As The Grits n Gravy Soul and Funk Revue, the duo have been throwing some of the best dance parties in town, fueled by an impeccable selection of soul and funk records from the 1960s and ’70s.

Tomlin grew up as a “mod” in the late-’70s UK, and his fixation with bands like the Specials and the Clash led to the discovery of James Brown (“Live at the Apollo was released the month before I was born,” he noted) and an ensuing obsession with soul music. He moved to the U.S. in ’86—“I flew into Dulles because it was the closest to the D.C. Go-Go scene,” he said—and ended up in Richmond, before making his way to Charlottesville in the ’90s.
Powell hails from nearby Nelson County. He is the grandson of a Baptist preacher, and was raised in a family that listened mostly to bluegrass. A high school interest in hip-hop led to a search for the original sources of sampled breaks, and eventually to an immersion in the Internet subculture of obsessive record collecting and trading.

The duo met while volunteering at WTJU. In early 2010, after a station fundraiser, Powell proposed the idea of the two of them hosting a regular monthly DJ series featuring vintage soul and funk records, and the suitably named Grits n Gravy was born. Their early gigs were a joyous, often unpredictable affair. Rowdy bar patrons repeatedly requested recent Jay-Z singles, or drunkenly demanded to hear Lady Gaga. But as the evening wore on, anxieties would loosen, and the crowd would end up shaking a leg to killer cuts from a bygone era. Vintage soul and funk is a genre that everyone enjoys (in theory), and Grits n Gravy is the perfect opportunity to put that appreciation into practice.

Alongside recognizable classics by James Brown, Otis Redding, and Sly and the Family Stone, the duo has a stable of reliable would-be classics that, despite their obscurity, are no less effective on the dance floor. Some songs are so infectious, you feel you’ve heard them before—or at least should have. Don Gardner’s “My Baby Likes to Boogaloo” is a personal favorite. Tomlin is particularly fond of “Can’t Find Nobody (To Take Your Place)” by Percy Wiggins of Memphis, as well as “Double Lovin’” by Percy’s brother, Spencer Wiggins. And a night on the Grits n Gravy dance floor remains incomplete without their unofficial anthem, “Funky Virginia,” a 1968 Norfolk-based single credited to Sir Guy.

While the discovery of rare records is its own specialized skill, the charm of soul is easily appreciated, and in recent years, many listeners have jumped on the funk bandwagon. Labels like Stones Throw and Numero Group have released numerous compilations of unknown classics by countless regional acts, and the bands on the Dap-Tone roster have stoked this flame by backing singers like Sharon Jones and Charley Bradley, giving them a second chance at a music career and introducing them to a new generation of fans.

Tomlin and Powell have twice made a pilgrimage to Ponderosa Stomp, a New Orleans-based festival “dedicated to recognizing the architects of rock-n-roll, blues, jazz, country, swamp pop, and soul.” The second year, they performed at the festivals’ Hip Drop pre-party, and have an open invitation to return. They also put their talents to use whenever a touring soul act makes its way to Charlottesville, and have performed as an opening act or after-party closer for Sharon Jones, the New Master Sounds, the Budos Band, Charles Bradley, and Al Green.

Since March, they’ve settled into a monthly gig at the Black Market Moto Saloon. “The nice thing about it is that people don’t just wander by when they’re wandering from bar to bar,” Tomlin said. “If they’re coming all the way over here, they’re coming to see us.” “More and more, people are coming here specifically to hear Grits n Gravy,” Powell added. “We have no idea who these people are. We’ve never seen them before, but they’re here for the music, and they love it.”