Former C-VILLE Weekly reporter Erin O'Hare joins other talented music writers for a chat about the state of live performance. Photo courtesy of WTJU.
Hear and there: It’s a question fans around the world are asking: Where does music go from here? As we navigate a reopening while keeping our distance, how do we commune around our favorite musical acts and enjoy concerts again? How do bands practice, record, and tour safely? What is the impact of our complex times on the creative mindset? WTJU’s Radio Talks brings together a lineup of locally connected experts, including Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield and former C-VILLE Weekly reporter Erin O’Hare to discuss where we are today and what we might hear in the future. Zoom required.
Alan Goffinski’s Pizzas of Charlottesville album—12 lighthearted jingles for a dozen local pizza spots—comes out Friday, June 5. Photo by Eze Amos
At any given time, at least 20 percent of Alan Goffinski’s headspace is occupied by pizza.
“Pizza’s the best,” he says. It’s his favorite food, and he has no qualms about admitting it: “If anyone tells you [their favorite food is] anything else, they’re lying.”
“Pizza’s there for the best times,” Goffinski continues sincerely, not an ounce of cheese in his voice. “That’s what makes it so important. It’s the meal you eat with your buds. It’s a celebration meal.”
His reverence and enthusiasm for the pie inspired Pizzas of Charlottesville, an album of 12 jingles for local pizza places out this Friday on Bandcamp.com.
Goffinski is perhaps best known as the director of The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, but he’s a musician, too. In the early 2000s, he toured and made a couple records with indie rock band The 1997, and this past December, in collaboration with a few other local musicians, released Smells Like Music, an album of 20 goofy-sweet children’s songs under the moniker Little Skunks.
So Goffinski’s been in “a playful songwriting headspace,” and with local pies of all kinds always on his mind, he says the jingles “developed organically.”
“The idea was that this would be my love letter to pizza, and to local business,” says Goffinski, who chose to focus the ditties on area spots (i.e., non-national chains) that serve primarily pizza and that might knead a little boost right now: Vita Nova, Lampo, Christian’s, Belmont Pizza, and the like.
Each jingle reflects a restaurant’s individual style, says Goffinski, and none “could easily be swapped out for the others without some rearranging. If your pizza restaurant has a brick oven pizza, I’m mentioning the brick oven. Or if you make a particularly large pizza, I’m going to maybe mention that.” (He definitely mentions that.)
Goffinski will donate Pizzas of Charlottesville proceeds to the Charlottesville Restaurant Community Fund, and he’s working with local artist and Burnley-Moran Elementary art teacher Ryan Trott on some merch, too, just in case the jingles catch on with fellow pizza-lovin’ locals.
That’s the purpose of a good jingle, he says: they’re short, simple, slightly repetitive. “They’re all deliberately a little obnoxiously catchy, the kind of thing that maybe you wish wasn’t stuck in your head, but because it is, you embrace it, smile, and curse my name when you’re falling asleep at night.”
Goffinski emphasizes that none of these jingles have been officially sanctioned by the restaurants they celebrate, but some seem to be on board with the idea. “I have no expectation that any of these pizza places are going to use these jingles in any way, shape, or form…especially if they’re trying to maintain any sort of air of professionalism,” he says with a half-self-conscious laugh. “But I would invite them to!”
Goffinski might eat some of these pies more than others, but each has its merits, he says, and he loves them all. “There’s no such thing as bad pizza. Even bad pizza is good pizza.”
This Saturday night, local musician and HIV/AIDS educator Shawn Decker celebrates 30 years since his Make-A-Wish Foundation "wish" with a Facebook Live concert.
Shawn Decker remembers the first time he heard Depeche Mode. He was 12 or 13, and getting a ride home from his friend’s brother when he noticed the music coming out of the car stereo.
“What is this?!” he asked.The vulnerability of the lyrics, the mood of the new wave/synth-pop sound—itwas unlike anything he’d heard before. Depeche Mode became his favorite band.
Thirty years ago, on June 6, 1990, Decker met Depeche Mode after a show at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. It was a turning point in his life, and he plans to commemorate the occasion sometime next month with a virtual party on Facebook Live.
What Decker’s really celebrating isn’t the fact that he got to meet his favorite band when he was 14, but that he’s alive to mark the occasion.
Decker was diagnosed with HIV, which he’d contracted through a blood transfusion, in 1987. He was 11 years old, and doctors gave him about two years to live. Meeting the band was Decker’s Make-A-Wish Foundation “wish.” He was ecstatic to meet Depeche Mode, but says it meant “coming to terms with the fact that I was eligible for it.”
In 1990, Shawn Decker (front left, in the patterned shirt) was fighting HIV and facing a frighteningly uncertain future. He met Depeche Mode (below) through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and will soon host a virtual concert to celebrate the 30 precious years since that night. Photo courtesy subject
But it also gave him something to strive for, he says. He remembers thinking “maybe there was some transfer of magic” when he shook the hand of keyboardist and primary songwriter Martin Gore, and maybe there was: Those 15 minutes with the band made him think that music was something he could pursue.
That same summer, while on vacation at Myrtle Beach, Decker and his best friend bought what he describes as some “rock outfits” and staged a photo shoot on the beach with the water coming in behind them. Publicity pics for when their own band hit it big. For the first time since his diagnosis, Decker allowed himself to envision the future.
Ten years later, thanks to his mom’s persistence in getting her son good medical care, and to breakthroughs in HIV treatments that came just as Decker’s health really started to decline, he was writing and performing his own new wave and synth-pop songs. Many were about living with HIV—making the decision to talk about that “remains the biggest moment in my life,” says Decker. He’d begun traveling the country with his girlfriend (now wife), Gwenn Barringer, speaking to auditoriums full of young people about HIV/AIDS and sexual health.
“Life is interesting like that,” says Decker, talking by Zoom from his music room, where he’s been hosting the virtual music series Shawn’s Ongoing Spacejam during the shutdown. “Sometimes you catch some magic in another way. I never thought I’d be open about [having] HIV,” he says.
Decker turns 45 in July, and now he’s asking, “What am I going to do for another 45 years?” He hopes he’ll be an old man, one who wears plaid pants all the time. But who knows, Decker says with a smile and a shrug. It’s like Depeche Mode sings on “Nothing,” from 1987’s Music for the Masses: “Life / Is full of surprises.”
June 3, 5:08pm: This story has been updated to reflect Decker’s choice to postpone the Facebook Live concert he’d originally scheduled for this Saturday, June 6. Instead, he’ll wait until July.
At 25, Blue O’Connell discovered she had partial hearing loss, but remained committed to a life as a musician. She’s just released Seven Songs of Solace, a multimedia songbook filled with both traditional and original music intended to bolster resilience. Photo by Amy and Jackson Smith
When Blue O’Connell sings an old song, she feels a strong connection to the past, to the person who wrote that song and all the people who’ve sung it before her.
“I often tell people…if you read a history book about [a] time, it was probably written by someone who didn’t live through that time,” says O’Connell. But in singing a song written during a certain period, there’s a sort of alchemy of time, space, and empathy that allows the singer to connect not just with a narrative, but with human experience and to lives and voices not always included in history books.
As we make our way through this latest historic moment, O’Connell’s looking to music as a means of comfort and hope, and she knows she’s not alone in that. She recently released Seven Songs of Solace, a songbook complete with sheet music, guitar tablature, and recordings of some of her own songs plus arrangements of traditional and popular tunes from different eras and places—seven songs that have resonated with O’Connell as she’s experienced longing, loss, grief, pain, peace, and resilience throughout her own life.
When O’Connell was a 25-year-old musician living and working in Chicago, afriend invited her over to hear his latest piano composition. She sat in the room with him for a while, waiting for the piece to begin. “When are you going to play it?” she asked.
Her friend paused. “I did.”
O’Connell hadn’t heard a single note. She’d lost the ability to hear certain frequencies, particularly higher ones, but she didn’t let that stop her from making music and writing songs. She moved to Charlottesville in 1989, and throughout the 1990s performed at Live Arts, The Prism Coffeehouse, First Night Virginia, and elsewhere, and was a folk music DJ at WTJU 91.1FM.
After September 11, 2001, O’Connell read a newspaper article about how people were coping with the tragedy. Some talked about “a song that gave voice to feelings they didn’t have, or validated their experience. Some said they went to a concert,” remembers O’Connell. Up until that moment, she’d understood the significance of music—she was a musician playing regular gigs after all—but those stories made her understand just how important, how personal, it is to so many people.
Soon after, an ad in a music magazine for a certified music practitioner program caught her eye. The training happened to be at Martha Jefferson Hospital, and O’Connell signed up right away. In 2003, she completed an internship at UVA hospital and was hired there as a musician-in-residence, playing for ICU patients as well as local nursing home residents.
In 2009, at age 50, O’Connell received a cochlear implant and started undergoing various therapies of her own to learn how to hear again. Hearing some of those frequencies, those notes, for the first time in many years was difficult, says O’Connell. But she persisted.
Playing therapeutic music, “in a lot of ways, is the opposite of what a [music] performer does,” says O’Connell. Performers aspire to entertain an audience, keep them engaged, excited, awake; therapeutic musicians aim to calm a listener to the point of relaxation, even slumber.
In the ICU, she plays unrecognizable music to avoid causing uncomfortable or painful memories that a person might associate with a particular song. Nursing home sets can be a bit more upbeat, and she fields requests to conjure happy memories and movement.
O’Connell imbues sensitivity and reassurance into Seven Songs of Solace, on the traditional songs she’s chosen—like “Shenandoah,” with its melody relating a “sense of longing and love,” and “Ode to Joy,” which Beethoven wrote after he went deaf—and in her originals.
She composed “Acceptance (for Mom)” after her mother died. O’Connell folded the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) into the music, which transforms as the song progresses. When she considered what “denial” might sound like, she thought of an Irish jig. “I know when I’m in denial, I dance around,” she says with a laugh.
“Choose the Sky” came about as O’Connell drove alone on a highway in Arizona. “I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t even notice I was driving in the most beautiful place you could imagine.” The lyrics came after the music, and for O’Connell, the song is about stability, how the sky is always present and yet always changing.
“For me, that’s a metaphor for what’s going on now, about finding something that will sustain you, and knowing it’s going to be okay.”
When the pandemic broke in March, O’Connell’s full-time hospital and nursing home work was “suspended indefinitely.” She misses it, but she’s still got the music, and in sharing her songbook, she’s finding some solace of her own.
Stand up to Save the Music and shake off the week. Musical Suspects play online this Friday. Publicity image.
Special something:Musical Suspects, well-loved veterans of the Charlottesville music scene, go live with their eclectic sound as part of The Front Porch’s virtual benefit concert series Save the Music. Matt Horn leads the tight- knit group with his boisterous voice and grooving trombone. Featuring drums, guitar, saxophone, and brass, this funky band of local legends plays to the crowd, even through a screen. Donated proceeds will benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Virginia.
Ivan Orr (pictured) and Ti Ames play The Front Porch's Save the Music series Tuesday, May 19. Photo by Sanjay Suchak
Saved by song: If anyone can Save the Music, it’s Ti Ames and Ivan Orr (pictured). Powerful vocalist Ames, well-known for their thespian talents (writer, director, and the first black actor to win the English-Speaking Union National Shakespeare Competition in 2012), is accompanied by pianist, vocalist, and saxophonist Orr, for an evening of song that would stand out in even the busiest of concert seasons. Proceeds from Save the Music will benefit the United Way of Greater Charlottesville and its COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund.
Kendall Street Company keeps fans tuned in to its multi-genre musical adventures through its weekly Entertainment Containment series. Publicity photo
Born to jam: Since mid-March, Charlottesville jam band Kendall Street Company has been keeping fans tuned in to its multi-genre musical adventures through the Containment Entertainment series (old episodes are available on KSC’s YouTube channel). From closing out a live concert festival and hosting special guests such as Erin Lunsford, to “a bildungsroman featuring historical footage and contemporary commentary,” the group rocks the virtual party scene.
This Friday night, Front Porch executive director Emily Morrison will pull out her banjo and take the virtual stage for an installment of the venue's Save the Music series.
Music matters:When Front Porch music school’s executive director Emily Morrison temporarily closed the doors to the popular venue, she was ready to break another barrier by livestreaming the robust programming students and fans have grown accustomed to. “We’ve talked for years about how streaming could enhance our live venue, making the concert experience accessible to people who can’t go out or who can’t afford concert tickets,” Morrison says. On Friday, she’ll pull out her banjo and take the virtual stage along with Gabe & Austin Robey & Friends for another installment of Save the Music.
Genna Matthew plays a virtual concert Friday, April 3, as part of The Front Porch's "Save the Music" series. Image: Elizabeth Swider
Live music in the comfort of your own home? Sounds too good to be true, but rest assured, it isn’t. As a temporary replacement for in-person concerts and events, The Front Porch streaming series Save the Music welcomes Charlottesville native Genna Matthew, whose bittersweet lyrics and soothing folk-pop vocals earned her the 2019 grand prize award at Nashville’s Music City SongStar competition.
Shagwüf celebrates the release of its new album Dog Days of Disco on Friday at the Southern. Photo by Rich Tarbell
By Sean McGoey
arts@c-ville.com
The section of Fourth Street Southeast that bears Heather Heyer’s name still invokes painful memories of August 12, 2017. Shagwüf bassist and vocalist Sally Rose was among the throng protesting against the Unite the Right rally that day.
“There’ve been few times where I’ve been scared like that in my life,” says Rose, who was standing just a few feet away from Heyer when a car barreled down the street and killed her. “It still feels like it just happened.”
Friday night at the Southern, Shagwüf will unveil its latest record, Dog Days of Disco, which feels simultaneously like a joyous celebration and an emotional reckoning. Rose says that’s by design.
“There’s so much work that we still have to do,” she says. “One of the most positive ways that we can think of doing that is through music.”
Dog Days maintains the band’s signature combination of danceable disco energy and head-banging, fuzzed-out riffage, but pairs it with weightier lyrics than on previous efforts.
“The boys (guitarist/vocalist Sweet Pete Stallings and drummer Pablo Daniel Olivieri) keep saying, ‘It’s so nice that we put out this happy, poppy disco-dance album,” Rose says. “And I’m like, ‘All my songs are…raw, almost murder ballad-esque.’ But that’s what makes it Shagwüf.”
One of the centerpieces of Dog Days of Disco, recorded in Richmond with producer Adrian Olsen, is “Television,” a song Stallings wrote as a response to the events of August 11 and 12.
“I’ve kind of been trying to…get that off my chest and write something about it for a long time,” Stallings says. “[But] it came really quick. That song probably took 20 minutes to write.”
“Television” starts with Stallings exploring the powerlessness of watching the horror unfold from afar, over a relatively subdued guitar riff, before Rose and Olivieri come in and crank up the volume.
“It was crazy because I knew Sally was there,” Stallings says. “I was just thinking about…the feeling of being away from it but being still pretty connected to it.”
Though the subject matter is on the darker side, “Television” is still a rabble-rousing rock song that fuses DNA from T. Rex, the Pixies, and Led Zeppelin. Stallings shifts gears toward the end, forgoing the despair and looking to bring people together: “Why are we divided when we all want the same stuff? / Money in our pockets and somebody to hold us.”
“Pete and I complement each other as writers because we write really differently,” Rose says. “When I write a heavy song, the music portrays that really hard. But with ‘Television’…it comes from a really heavy place, but it’s supposed to leave you with a positive message.”
Rose, 28, a Nelson County native who grew up on James Brown and Black Sabbath records and started writing songs at 8, is a self-described “madwoman” who also fronts another band, runs a women’s self-defense organization called Fight Like a Grrrl Club, trains for her own second-degree black belt—and still works 40 hours a week. The laid-back Stallings, 33, hails from Staunton, played saxophone in high school, and cites “pop music since 1950” as his musical influences.
They built their musical rapport over some 15 years in the Virginia music scene, including six where Stallings played guitar in The Sally Rose Band—a folk-tinged group that also features Rose’s mother, Catherine Monnes. But the urge to crank up the distortion and return to heavier music led to Shagwüf’s founding, first as a side project and then as a full-blown band in 2014.
The Southern also hosted the release for Shagwüf’s first album, 2016’s ¡Salvaje!, so it was a natural choice when it came to unveiling Dog Days of Disco to the world.
“We’ve been playing there for such a long time, we didn’t really even think about where else we’d have it,” Stallings says—a sentiment that Rose, who says release parties are “like a wedding for the band,” echoes.
“We would much rather play to a room full of sweaty bodies than have to worry about…it not feeling as intimate,” Rose says.
Harrisonburg band Wineteeth, who performed at Fight Like a Grrrl’s F.L.A.G. Femme Fest event last March, will open Friday, and local artist Leo Charre will be doing portraits before the show begins—a maneuver that Rose hopes will get people in the door early to support Wineteeth.
Rose and Stallings referenced “secret guests” that they refused to divulge—but pointed to the Sweet Freakshow, Shagwüf’s 2019 anniversary show, for concertgoers searching for hints.
“Anyone who’s been to one of the bigger Shagwüf shows…knows that we like to do weird shit,” Rose says. “Anybody who was at our Freakshow…there will be a tiny taste of that.”
Ultimately, even when the songs get heavy, it’s all about having a good time and fostering an inclusive scene.
“The Charlottesville music scene is great, it’s diverse,” Rose says. “But just like any music town, there’s definitely some cliques.
“We like to fuck that whole dynamic up and…get everybody to support everybody. I think everyone does a lot better when they support each other.”
Shagwüf’s record release show, scheduled for Friday, March 13 at The Southern Cafe & Music Hall, has been postponed due to growing concerns about COVID-19.
