Tag: Live Music

We first heard The Zombies in 1964 when the hit single “She’s Not There” crossed the pond from UK pop charts and gave the group some stateside bona fides. The band, featuring founding keyboardist Rod Argent and lead singer Colin Blunstone, is still delivering its hits on stage, including “Time of the Season” (What’s your name? / Who’s your daddy?), and pressed a new record, Different Game, in 2023.

$39.50-64.50, 8pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St. Downtown Mall. jeffersontheater.com.

If you know banjo, you know Tony Trischka (right). As one of the most influential pickers of the last 50 years, Trischka has followers throughout the bluegrass genre, from Béla Fleck to Steve Martin and Billy Strings. His latest project involves transcribing rare and unreleased Earl Scruggs’ recordings for a touring show he’s named EarlJam, during which Trischka tells Scruggs’ musical life story from childhood to the legendary three-finger player’s final years.

$5-50, 7:30pm. The Front Porch, 221 E Water St. thefrontporch.org.

The Albemarle High School Jazz Ensemble takes the stage at The Paramount Theater for its annual Swing Into Spring benefit concert that features a lineup of local and regional musicians, including John D’earth, Charles Owens, Andrew Randazzo, Greg Thomas, and more. Under the direction of Andrew LaPrade, the award-winning ensemble is raising money for City of Promise, which aims to make a positive impact on generational poverty through full-family, child-centered initiatives.

$30, 7pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 Main E. St., Downtown Mall. theparamount.net

Sea shanties seem to have had a moment. Could dark chamber cabaret be next?

If so, Charlottesville’s Please Don’t Tell will likely help lead the macabre movement. After all, the three-piece band kind of made the genre up.

“I think that because we come from varied … but classical backgrounds, chamber music and our kind of salty, quirky, offbeat cabaret elements just came together,” says Christina Fleming, Please Don’t Tell’s founding member. “We have a range of themes, from introspective and difficult things that have happened to us to tributes to women in history.”

Fleming, a haunting vocalist and playful pianist who’s been a longtime Charlottesville music scene fixture, started Please Don’t Tell as a duo, alongside Nicole Rimel on cello and backing vocals, in 2020. After violinist Anna Hennessy joined for a single live show on a dark night in 2021, the trio stayed together. On March 1, they released their daunting debut recording, a six-song eponymous EP.

Fleming and Rimel were music majors together at the University of Virginia, and the sound Please Don’t Tell produces today—essentially period show tunes with a focus on the frightening and subtly naughty while still being fun—“just kind of came out,” Fleming says.

That’s not to say Please Don’t Tell is without influence or precedent. But the dark cabaret lineage heard from Tom Waits, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and Kurt Vile lacks the instrumentation, attitude, and commitment to recreating an 1800s aesthetic that Please Don’t Tell offers.

“There is sort of a sea shanty vibe to the storytelling. It’s slightly Brechtian,” Fleming says. “We’re always trying to come up with fun ways to make it more theatrical.”

When the band plays its Spirit Ball and record-release party on March 9 at the Southern Café and Music Hall, the trio will do so against the backdrop of a fictional ball that took place in the late 19th century. “On Saturday, March 9th, 1889, 200 attendees at the The Grand Benefit Ball believed themselves in for an evening of fancy dress and the latest music,” a press release from Please Don’t Tell reads. But they “instead reportedly disappeared without trace, orchestra and all.”

What makes Please Don’t Tell so dastardly yet delightful? The lyrics focus on struggles both internal and historical, while the music lends an irreverent obscura to these trials and tribulations.

“I started writing some of these songs a long time ago, when I didn’t know how to cope with certain things,” Fleming says. “It was just me writing at a piano, and it helped to be able to laugh at the harder moments in my life. It makes us resilient as humans to be able to find the absurd in the difficult.”

Fleming didn’t think anyone would hear most of the tunes, so there was no real intention of making them public-ready. Then Rimel joined her college friend for private jam sessions—just two music nerds having fun with a piano and a cello.

Hennessy’s violin added the finishing touch to the troupe, which laid down its first professional recording at Fatback Sound in Nashville with Gabe Rabben, and local Sons of Bill alum Sam Wilson, on production. Noticeably absent a proper percussion section, the record skips and hops on piano rhythms with Wilson’s keen handling of Please Don’t Tell’s aesthetic.

“They recorded us like a true chamber group, all in the same room,” Fleming says. “We had a lot of fun; Sam and [Rabben] were wonderful to draw into what we wanted to do. Actually, trying to find the right fit and person took some time. We wanted someone who understood our flexible, organic, quirky nature, while also being narrative.”

Fleming says her and Rimel’s love of the morbid comes from being longtime “goth kids.” Fleming drew on the affinity in her locally renowned former band In Tenebris, an alt hard-rock outfit with an undead edge. But working with Please Don’t Tell is the first time she’s made her own, truly original music.

Hennessey brings yet another influence to the bawdy ballroom with a background in bluegrass. And all three of Please Don’t Tell’s musicians come from impressive musical training—Rimel and Fleming at the hands of UVA’s music department, Fleming now being a vocal instructor, while Hennessey is the orchestra teacher at St. Anne’s-Belfield.

The Spirit Ball will feature New York-based mystical folk duo Charming Disaster and synth pop two-piece Nouveau Vintage, in addition to Please Don’t Tell. For the dark chamber cabaret portion, showgoers can expect to hear the vignette-like tracks they’ll find on the band’s first EP, including the earwormy “Nearsighted,” ruefully lullabying “My Therapist,” and jaunty “Heave Ho.”

Will any of those tracks be the next viral hit a la Nathan Evans’ 2021 version of “Wellerman”? Perhaps, if the spirits wish it so.

Four renowned choreographers present an eclectic performance by the Richmond Ballet that includes imaginative works such as Awkwarium, a piece that evokes the atmosphere of a life underwater, and delves into the human experience and random (or not so random) personal encounters. Each presentation features its own choreography of contemporary and classical dance paired with curated musical selections from composers such as J.S. Bach and Hans Zimmer.

$17-23, 7:30pm. PVCC Main Stage, 501 College Dr. pvcc.edu.

Folk meets indie, uniting two unique, popular bands in The Tag Team Tour: An Evening with Dawes and Lucius. Dawes has an easy-going-yet-moody jangle that’s heavy on instruments with a sound matching the Laurel Canyon vibe. Lucius enjoys stand-alone success, and has contributed vocals to many other artists’ work, including The Killers, John Legend, and Brandi Carlile.

$42.50-69.50, 8pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. jeffersontheater.com

A group of singers who banded together to start a local chorus in 1966 has kept the vision alive for decades as The Oratorio Society of Virginia. Together in Song: Music from the Theatre spotlights seasoned soprano singer Madeline Coffey (no stranger to performing in the area) as soloist, and includes works from musical theater and opera, ranging from Wagner to Sondheim, and Verdi to Rodgers and Hammerstein. The concert is preceded by a masterclass with Music Director Michael Slon that’s open to community members.

$10-$20, 4pm. First Presbyterian Church, 500 Park St. oratoriosociety.org.

By Dave Gil de Rubio

The ancient Greek playwright Euripides said, “To a father growing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter.”

It’s a sentiment Paul Janeway, the namesake of Southern soul outfit St. Paul & the Broken Bones, can relate to. In 2020, fatherhood and the ability to create a musical message for Janeway’s then-unborn child became a major inspiration for Angels in Science Fiction, the fifth and most recent album from this Alabama octet.

When Janeway and his wife learned they were expecting a daughter, the 30-something frontman found himself grappling with a wellspring of creativity amidst a generational pandemic.

“Once the pandemic happened, along with what was going on with George Floyd and all this type of social unrest and big things that were happening, it was spawning a lot of music and inspiration,” he says. “For me, becoming a dad for the first time was about exploring all the anxieties, joys, and clichés that come with it. The record was [coming along] in a being-struck-by-lightning kind of pace where we’d come up with something and the song was written. It was just kind of overflowing.”

A flurry of songwriting occurred in April 2020, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, it wasn’t until September that St. Paul & the Broken Bones was able to hit Sam Phillips Recording studio in Memphis, along with a quick jaunt back to Alabama, and lay down what became the dozen songs that make up Angels in Science Fiction. For Janeway, getting these tunes in the can became a race against the clock because his daughter was due later that month.

What emerged is a complicated collection of songs wrapped in the ambience of quasi-psychedelic neo-soul that subtly conveys Janeway’s feelings of joy, fear, and confusion tied to this major worldview shift that comes with bringing another life into the world. Spirituality is a major driver in these songs, which is unsurprising given how Janeway’s childhood is rooted in a conservative religious upbringing. And while he’s gone down a more secular path not unlike his hero Al Green, the holy spirit is never far away on Angels.

The melancholy title cut opens with Janeway crooning, “I don’t know if God is real, but then I see Him in your eyes / I don’t think I hear his voice, but then I hear your little cry / Angels seem like fiction, but now I’m not so sure,” while the glockenspiel-soaked “Sea Star’’ has its roots in a pastor’s sermon from Janeway’s youth. Elsewhere, the mid-tempo soul groove of “City Federal Building’’ evokes vibes of minor-key Stax/Volt as Janeway sings of crumbling skyscrapers and dead leaves. The album’s most heart-on-your-sleeve moment is the piano and string closer “Marigold,” a tribute named for his daughter that finds Janeway promising, “I don’t want you to be alone / But I gotta go, I’ve got a show.”

While family is at the core of this new record, it’s not the first time Janeway has looked to his family tree for a creative spark. The band’s third album, 2018’s Young Sick Camellia, went from the vocalist wanting to record separate EPs that would serve as the voices of him, his father, and grandfather, to a full-length outing that musically connected the trio of generations with spoken-word conversations between the singer and his grandfather interspersed into the album. In many ways, Angels in Science Fiction is a companion piece to Camellia, despite the two albums sandwiching 2022’s The Alien Coast.

“I think my relationship with family is a complicated thing, as is my relationship with religion,” Janeway says. “Alien Coast is its own separate thing. I think [Angels and Camellia] intertwine a lot and are such a part of what inspires me that it’s still a well. I think there’s definite connective tissue between those two records.”

St. Paul & the Broken Bones is currently on tour in the States, including a stop at The Jefferson Theater on March 3, and presenting a full Angels in Science Fiction production on this run. In the meantime, Janeway feels this latest outing is a creative inflection point for his band. The vocalist went from being a kid whose childhood dream was to become a preacher, and stumbled into a secular gig fronting a soul band, to getting a firmer grip on his creative impulses a decade-plus in.

“I’ve said that with this record, it feels like the end of the book,” Janeway says. “This feels like whatever the band was trying to do, prove or whatever it is, this is the end. Now, we as a band have to reassess: what are we? What do we want to accomplish, and what do we want to do?

“Now that we’re where we’re at, I think it’s really fun. But it does feel like the end of an era for us with this record and I think that’s interesting. People are asking if we’re going to break up and that’s not what I’m saying.”

Some of Charlottesville’s most talented vocalists take flight at Songbirds & Divas. Ti Ames, Richelle Claiborne (right), and Leslie M. Scott-Jones stir the soul with powerful renditions of songs by Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Jazmine Sullivan, Destiny’s Child, The Marvelettes, and more. The singers perform both solo sets and as a group in a concert to benefit the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.

$35-45, 8pm. Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, 233 Fourth St. NW. jeffschoolheritagecenter.org