Tag: Sally Rose

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ARTS Pick: Shagwüf

Shagwüf celebrates five years as a band with a special show at IX Art Park Saturday, May 25. Publicity photo

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.

Saturday, May 25. $15-20, 8pm. IX Art Park, 522 Second St. SE. 207-2355.

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Arts

Musical language: Catherine Monnes is bringing music to life

Catherine Monnes performs at The Bridge PAI’s Telemetry series on Saturday. Photo by Tom Daly

In the sunflower yellow kitchen at the back of her narrow house, Catherine Monnes drops a few thistle teabags into a pink tulip-shaped teapot full of boiling water. She slides the lid into place and carries the pot into her plant-filled sunroom. The evening light is disappearing behind the trees in her North Downtown yard as she sets it down among the orchids on her table.

Monnes’ home is full of things that have a story: paintings of a strangely tiny-footed Bob Dylan and another with three of The Beatles, as well as a chair covered in reptile teeth that she bought in New Orleans from a man frustrated that he hadn’t made any sales that day.

As she pours, Monnes, a multi-instrumentalist perhaps best known for her cello and fiddle work in a number of Charlottesville bands, recalls the story of how she came to own her cello. A bag of cello pieces came from a friend who’d found the fragmented instrument wasting away in a rotting case in a flooded basement. Other musicians and luthiers told her it’d cost thousands of dollars to fix—money she didn’t have—but she held on to the pieces for a few years.

At violin competitions, she kept running into the same young man in the wee hours of the morning, when both of them were still awake and searching for a jam partner. Monnes soon learned that he was apprenticing to be a luthier, and she mentioned the cello to him; he excitedly asked if he could do the repair and Monnes says he charged her just $250 “to bring these pieces to life.” A set of cello strings alone can cost that much, she says, eyes wide.

“It’s still not a great cello, and it needs regluing all the time,” Monnes says, but it’s her cello, and her affinity for the instrument dates back to childhood.

When Monnes was growing up in New Jersey and then the Washington, D.C., area, music “was one of those things that you just did. You hang clothes on the line. You play music,” she says. Monnes recalls singing constantly with her four sisters, and in the same way that some kids pretend to play the piano on the kitchen table, she’d take two curtain rods and imagine they were a cello and a bow.

“My mother played classical music, and I was almost violently disinterested in it,” Monnes says. “It put me to sleep, and I also saw her doing this really intense scramble-struggle for work.” Monnes also saw her mother’s battle with self-worth—if she didn’t get a job, she doubted her talent, her dedication. “I didn’t want to do that,” Monnes says, and so she listened instead to Jimi Hendrix and other experimental musicians.

But she never gravitated toward the guitar, or to drums, “the obvious instruments for the kind of music that I was drawn to,” says Monnes. Instead she pursued the violin and cello. Monnes says she “wanted to figure it out, how to make cello, and violin, speak that [type of music].”

“I was really wanting to bring another sound to the palette of everything, and that’d be both in terms of bringing a cello into places it isn’t usually, and also making a cello sound ways it doesn’t usually.” That urge comes naturally to Monnes, who believes that every instrument has its own voice, and it’s up to the musician to coax it into speaking a certain language.

“I really care to be listening,” Monnes says. She thinks her ability to play music responsively is why she loves performing in projects led by other musicians—she’s provided cello work for glitter rock outfit The Sally Rose Band (the eponymous Sally Rose is Monnes’ daughter), goth-ish rock band The Secret Storm, experimental jazz group Restroy and flute-doom metal act FLOOM. When she talks about how touched she is by the number of musicians who invite her to play music with them, Monnes places her palm to her chest, closes her eyes and bows her head. “I’m really moved and excited to be invited,” she says.

Her upcoming set at the Telemetry experimental music series at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative on Saturday is a rare solo set. There will be some cello, of course, but she’ll also play a few synthesizers she made in an instrument-making class taught by Peter Bussigel in UVA’s music department.

Each of her solo pieces has a certain shape and progression, but there will be plenty of room for improvisation, and Monnes plans to participate in the usual paradox of performance “of either losing yourself or being completely there. …It’s almost like I don’t know which to say,” she says, laughing.

Monnes thinks her set will be entertaining, but she wants it to be more than that. “I hope it’s musical, that it has some beauty, that it has some edge,” she says. “I can usually manage interesting. And I’m thankful if beautiful happens.”

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Arts

Local middle schooler organizes suicide prevention concert

Charlie Shea, 13, is an eighth-grader at Henley Middle School. For an English project, she’s organizing Celebrate Yourself at the Southern on March 18 to benefit the Suicide Prevention Awareness and Resource Council. Photo by Eze Amos

On Charlie Shea’s first day of middle school two years ago, she received some words of wisdom from her father, Danny Shea. “My dad told me, ‘It’s going to suck. I’m just going to brief you,’” Shea remembers. In the past two years, she says she experienced “enough bad days to go around,” as well as fellow students who would say anything to make someone feel worse, good friends and “‘good friends’ in quotations.”

“Society makes us feel like we need to paint this picture like we’re all perfect—perfect bodies and perfect grades,” says Shea. “We’re all wound so tight to the point that it’s stressful.”

Shea found a support system through her teachers at Henley Middle School and through her love of music. She sings and plays the guitar, ukulele, piano and drums, and likes “old music” like David Bowie and Queen. She says Beyoncé—“my idol”—always lifts her up. Growing up surrounded by the “awesome, badass, fun people” in the Charlottesville music industry, Shea believes in the power of music to spread positivity.

Shea’s English teacher, Elizabeth Sweatman, recently challenged her students to identify a world issue and try to do something about it. One day later, Shea knew she wanted to manage and host a concert advocating for two issues she’s always felt passionate about—suicide awareness and prevention, and removing the stigma surrounding mental illness.

“I hear about [these issues] so much and see how horrible they are,” says Shea, who has seen many of her peers affected by stress, anxiety and depression. “There needs to be a call to action, to stop being so scared of it. When someone hears the scary S-word, no one wants to talk about it.”

On Sunday, she takes the stage at the Southern as emcee alongside Sally Rose for the Celebrate Yourself show benefiting the Suicide Prevention Awareness and Resource Council. The council is part of Region Ten and provides suicide awareness education and training, mental health resources and other health and wellness efforts like the annual SPARC of Hope Walk/Run in October.

Joining Rose and Shea in the lineup are local acts 14 Stories and Unintended Consequences, both comprised of students from Western Albemarle High School, and Nahlj Corbin and Sarah Gross, who are two soloists from the Music Resource Center. Between sets, Shea and Rose will perform together.

Gross, a freshman at William Monroe High School in Greene County, plays acoustic and electric guitar, and recently performed her original song “Yellow Sweater” at the MRC’s album release party. It’s a raw, honest acoustic piece that showcases Gross’ vocals and storytelling capabilities. She is excited to perform on a stage bigger than anything she’s played on before, and to be doing so for Shea’s cause.

“I personally have known friends with depression and anxiety, and wouldn’t want anyone in that situation to not have access to help when they need it,” says Gross.

Shea’s father says the experience of coordinating an entire show has been empowering for his daughter. As a talent buyer for Starr Hill Presents and Red Light Management, Danny Shea didn’t want to make the experience easy for her.

“If we [at the Southern] do anything, it has to be viable. It’s the same for anyone that pitches a show,” Danny says. “We want to do something that reinforces the fabric of what is good about our community.”

Lori Wood, Region Ten’s Director of Prevention, Outpatient and Crisis Services for Youth, calls Shea a “go-getter.”

“When I heard about [her], I was like, ‘Wow, look at this!’” Wood remembers. She’s grateful to collaborate with students like Shea in city and county schools to increase access to mental health resources, legislation and training.

It’s that wow factor that has brought Shea the most joy throughout her project.

“I love seeing people’s reactions,” says Shea. “They’re like, ‘What? You’re putting together a concert? You’re 13. How can you do that? Something’s not right here. You’re a child.’”

Peer support

The National Institute of Mental Health offers the following steps you can take when someone is contemplating suicide.

Ask them: “Are you thinking about killing yourself?” It’s not an easy question
but studies show that asking at-risk individuals does not increase suicides.

Keep them safe: Reducing access to highly lethal items or places is an important part of suicide prevention.

Be there: Listen carefully and learn what the individual is thinking and feeling.

Help them connect: Save the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s number in your phone so it’s there when you need it: 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Stay connected: Staying in touch after a crisis or after being discharged from care can make a difference.