Tag: The Garage

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Pick: Poetica

More than words: Poetic lyricism, creative ambition, and layered, lush production are alt-folk-pop artist Rachael Sage’s specialties. For two decades, Sage has steadily released over a dozen albums, winning awards and touring with an eclectic mix of artists in the process. Created in lockdown, her new band Poetica has a spoken-word album of the same name that is laced with delicate guitar and shiver-inducing lyrics.

Saturday 10/23. Free, 6pm. The Garage, 100 E. Jefferson St.,
thegaragecville.com.

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Arts

Solo spotlight: Frequent collaborator Reagan Riley steps to the front of the stage

After three years of writing and recording her own material, as well as being featured on a slew of local rap tracks, R&B and neo-soul artist Reagan Riley performs her first-ever solo sets this week. Photo by Bua

On the enclosed patio of the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, Reagan Riley reclines into a stack of jewel-toned pillows scattered on the bench behind her as grey-white wisps of fruit-flavored tobacco vapor curl through the afternoon air, dissipating into a thin haze that’s more sunshine than hookah smoke. The room’s hardworking window A/C unit hums while Riley takes a sip of a matcha cooler—a deep, emerald green iced tea with a slight vegetal flavor, recommended by the tea house owner for its ability to take the edge off of a July afternoon in Charlottesville. Riley deems it “so nice.”

The whole scene is chill as fuck and therefore the perfect setting for Riley to discuss her electronic/neo-soul music.

Riley was raised in Charlottesville by musician parents—mom’s a singer and flutist, dad’s an a cappella singer and trumpet player—who encouraged their only child to pursue any and every creative interest: painting, drawing, poetry, singing. She’d always loved singing along to R&B and rap tracks and, in 2016, at age 18, stepped into the recording booth herself. Since then, she’s sung the hook on a slew of local rap tracks and appeared onstage with her collaborators. She’s released a good amount of her own original material, too, including the Summer Complex EP (2016), the Grown Since full-length album (2018), and a number of singles. After three years of writing and recording, Riley will perform her first-ever solo set on Wednesday night at The Garage (and her second on Sunday at IX Art Park). So, what’s taken her so long?

The short answer, says Riley, is fear. But the long answer—the real answer—is that Riley, just 21, has been taking her time finding her sound and herself.

“I’m an introvert,” says Riley. “I’ve always been kind of shy,” a singer who stepped into the booth not necessarily with the intention of sharing her work with others, but to grow confident in her voice and her lyrics.

Music “makes it very easy” for Riley to express whatever she’s thinking or feeling. “I’m always writing about my experiences, so in that sense, it’s always just my truth, however that comes out,” she says.

What comes out, says Riley, is a style that’s “definitely R&B, neo-soul-like. Chill vocals, kind of sensual and sexy. I don’t have a super big voice; my thing is more of a vibe. It’s a mood.” She’s been compared to Syd Tha Kyd (from The Internet) and SZA, and she says she feels a bit of vocal and vibe kinship with local indie folk-pop artist Kate Bollinger.

Riley sings on several local projects including the hook on Sondai’s “Silver Linings,” and on “Shadow,” off CLARKBAR$’ Tasty project. She’s collaborated with Keese a number of times.

“Reagan is dope,” says Keese. “Her style is unique. All you have to do is send her the track, she’ll write and come up with her own ideas. She turns a good song into a great song.”

Riley likes to mix up her process. Sometimes she’ll get a line in her head, write it down, and the next day, incorporate it into a song. Sometimes, she’s in the mood to write poetry instead, but when she looks back on it weeks or months later, it sounds like pretty good lyrics.

“I try not to do it the same way every time,” says Riley. “I think that’s dangerous…being creative is just being in the now, and if you’re caught up on doing something a certain way, you might miss up on an opportunity for something beautiful and organic to happen.”

Sometimes she hears the perfect beat—either given to her by a producer, or sourced from YouTube—and will have a song on the page in 10 minutes, without a change. That’s how it went with “Weekend,” her newest single, recorded after Riley hadn’t sung into a mic for about a year.

“It’s good to be back,” Riley declares at the start of “Weekend,” which is about the aftermath of a relationship that she was ready to end. It’s a song about self-rediscovery, Riley’s realization that she can’t lift people up if someone’s holding her down. It’s the kind of song that you might put on the stereo of a convertible as you drive a little too fast on a beachside highway, experiencing the freedom of movement that’s in your ears.

“The End,” another of Riley’s recent Spotify releases, is about her ability to see through bullshit. “This foamy sticky humidity, I look right past what eyes can see,” she sings at the start of this song. It’s an acknowledgment of how far she’s come already, and how past relationships have shaped her future—as a person and as an artist hoping to connect with her audience.

And right now, that means stepping into the spotlight as a solo artist on stage (with a little help from her rapper friends, at times), fear be damned.

Music “feeds me,” she says, settling deeper into the pillows and taking a sip of the matcha cooler. “It feeds my soul. It makes me happy, in the simplest sense. It’s good for me. And I’m always trying to do things that are good for me.”

Reagan Riley will perform her first solo sets this week: she’s at The Garage Wednesday, July 24, and at IX Art Park Sunday, July 28.

 

UPDATE: Wednesday, July 24, 11:15am. The show at The Garage has been cancelled.

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Arts

ARTS Pick: John Shakespear

John Shakespear weaves modern woes into song at The Garage on Thursday. Publicity image.

Literally literary: The first full album from Boston’s John Shakespear, Spend Your Youth (released May 10), is described as a coming-of-age record tinged by the times. Now making music in Nashville, Shakespear’s harmonies draw comparisons to the wistful pinings of Fleet Foxes and Elliott Smith, while his lyrics reflect the current political climate, his personal journey, and the poetics he’s gleaned while studying with writers such as Edmund White and Lorrie Moore.

Thursday 5/16. Donations accepted, 8pm. The Garage, 100 E. Jefferson St., thegaragecville.com.

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ARTS Pick: Nathan Colberg and Grant Frazier

Nathan Colberg plays songs from his record, Silo, at The Garage on Sunday, August 26.

Two of UVA’s favorite crooners join forces for a rare, one-night-only show. Nathan Colberg graduated back in 2017, and his music career has quickly gained traction with beautiful, keyboard-driven tracks like “Charlottesville” (understandably, a local favorite), and his first full-length, Silo. Grant Frazier is a rising fourth-year, but he already has a 2016 album under his belt. His musical style follows in the footsteps of singer-songwriter greats like Jack Johnson and John Mayer.

Sunday, August 26. Donations accepted, 8pm. The Garage, 100 W. Jefferson St. thegaragecville.com.

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The Rainey Day Quartet gets downtown grooving

The Rainey Day Quartet sets up for an evening of groovy summer jazz at The Garage on Friday. Photo by Martyn Kyle.

If you’ve been on the Downtown Mall this summer, you’ve likely seen four young musicians set up in front of Kilwin’s, beside a white board that reads “Help Us Pay For College” propped in a guitar case with a shallow sea of coins and crumpled bills pooling at its base.

The Rainey Day Quartet formed just over a month ago, but the band is already turning heads and swiveling hips with its approach to jazz music.

Home on summer break from Carnegie Mellon University, Albemarle High School graduate Sam Rainey was eager to busk on the mall and make a few bucks while doing what he loves—playing jazz. But jazz is more fun with a band, so he rang up Jack Treece, an AHS rising senior, to join him on upright bass (the backbone of a jazz quartet), and recent AHS graduate Ben Eisenberg to round out the rhythm section on drums. Rainey tapped another AHS jazz band alumnus and current James Madison University student, saxophonist Anthony Hoang, as the quartet’s soloist.

It’s a slightly unusual combination, explains Rainey. Typically, jazz quartets have piano rather than guitar, but pianos aren’t exactly portable (even keyboards are difficult to lug around and set up properly). Plus, guitar allows the band to explore a funkier, groovier sound that appeals to the quartet.

And also, evidently, to its listeners—the group draws a crowd during its noontime and Saturday evening pop-up performances, compelling passersby to stop and listen, tap a toe or even shimmy, swirl and twirl to the beat—summer heat be damned.

The four musicians, who play The Garage Friday night, are drawn to jazz because of its versatility, for the creative freedom it offers and encourages. “You don’t have to play exactly what’s on the page,” says Treece. “It can be more expressive within the band, because it’s meant to be more interpretive than exact.”

With that in mind, The Rainey Day Quartet is not averse to infusing swing, bop, bossa nova and funk elements into its music, and it’s equally willing to take a groove-heavy, see-where-it-goes approach to pop classics and current radio hits.

In a single set, RDQ might play jazz standards out of The Real Book, Erroll Garner’s classic “Misty” modernized with a hip-hop funk groove, a jazzy rendition of Jason Mraz’s pop track “I’m Yours” and a rendition of The Beatles’ “Yesterday.”

“Once we get a crowd, we like to give them something they’ve heard on the radio, something modern they can stop and dance to,” says Treece.

No matter what they play, it’s an adventure. Because jazz doesn’t demand musicians to play “exactly by the book,” says Hoang, the quartet is free to change key, tempo or flavor—even switch songs halfway through if they want to.

That freedom and versatility hinges on the quartet’s ability not just to play together, but actively listen to one another as they play. It’s a skill they say they learned from Albemarle High School band director Greg Thomas.

“A big thing for us is how we communicate through a conversation of improvisation,” says Eisenberg. That conversation is spoken in a secret language that only the band understands—a unique combination of eye contact, body language and music cues. For example, if the band is playing at medium tempo, Rainey can move it into double time on guitar, prompting Eisenberg to match that tempo on drums so that Treece can lay into a heavier groove on bass, paving the way for Hoang to divert his sax solos down an untrodden path.

This is what makes jazz the ultimate creative exercise, says Hoang to sounds of agreement from his band members.

And people seem to like it, adds Rainey. At one point during a recent Saturday evening performance, a crowd of at least 20 people gathered to listen to the band. Most of them were dancing, laughing and smiling as they moved, says Rainey. These are the moments that he savors, seeing firsthand how the music touches its listeners. “It feels great to make a small difference in their day,” he says.

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ARTS Pick: Man About a Horse shows off their music

If bluegrass doesn’t typically grab your attention, Man About a Horse might be the band to change that. This five-piece from Philadelphia is on a mission to transform the folksy genre into dance music. Formed in 2014, the group employs mandolin, fiddle and banjo to create an up-tempo sound that both pays homage to and revitalizes its bluegrass origins with sets that combine original tracks and fiery covers of pop songs, accented by the band’s iconic horsehead mask.

Friday, June 22. Free, 8pm. The Garage, 100 W. Jefferson St. thegaragecville.com.

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Charlottesville SOUP serves up its 10th micro-grant

Andrew Gabbert and Elizabeth Brightbill of Terra Voce will have four minutes to enlist the SOUP audience’s support of their third album, which features a mix of Brazilian choro and jazz, traditional Galician folk, and 18th-century Iberian dances. Publicity Photo.

A bowl of soup is a comfort. Whether you are seeking relief from a head cold or cold weather, or want to pour your soul into cooking a meal shared with friends, soup is the answer.

In 2013, Victoria Williams, Maureen Brondyke and Brooke Ray infused those ideas of sustenance and community into Charlottesville SOUP—a semi-annual dinner series where attendees listen to four-minute pitches, then vote for one project to receive proceeds from the $10 ticket sales and donations.

“I knew local artists who were struggling to afford to make their art and I thought SOUP might be a way for a lot of people to give a little and help fix that,” says Williams. She learned about SOUP’s model from Kate Daughdrill, a UVA graduate who co-founded The Garage before moving to Detroit to get her MFA and co-found Detroit SOUP in 2010.

Brondyke says at the first SOUP “There were over 250 people in line [at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative], stretching all the way down Graves Street, and we had to cut it off at 70. People were so excited they gave us money for tickets even though they couldn’t come in.”

In May 2013, photographer and former McGuffey artist Megan Bent won the $1,720 grant to fund her journey biking and photographing the California Coast Classic—an eight-day, 525-mile bike ride that benefits the Arthritis Foundation.

“My experience to have a body of work that was very personal, to be supported and endorsed locally helped me feel like the work I was doing mattered,” says Bent, who lives with autoimmune arthritis, and now makes art while teaching photography at the University of Hawaii. “That was really monumental to me—not just to make [my art], but to have a whole community say we want to see that work.”

Cellist Wes Swing and visual artist Bolanle Adeboye won $2,696 last October. The grant funded a project rendering participants’ self-reported emotions in audio feedback loops woven together by Swing, while Adeboye created a tapestry of dip-dyed cards in colors corresponding with six major emotions: anxiety, depression, anger, love, joy and hope.

“[SOUP] was a big part of why the project moved forward,” says Adeboye. “It’s starting a race at the top of the hill as opposed to sloughing it. We’re still rolling off that momentum.”

On June 20, seven more artists will pitch projects during SOUP’s tenth installment. The lineup includes flutist Elizabeth Brightbill and cellist Andrew Gabbert of the duo Terra Voce, former New City Arts resident and textile artist Tobiah Mundt and collaborator Kimberly Anderson, opera singers Wesley Diener and Rachel Mink, and illustrator Laura Lee Gulledge. Brondyke anticipates that at the conclusion of this SOUP, the program will have raised more than $20,000 to fund and inspire local artists.

Brightbill and Gabbert hope the grant will fund their third album, a mix of Brazilian choro and jazz, traditional Galician folk, and 18th-century Iberian dances.

Mundt and Anderson will pitch a movable, installation piece featuring a six-foot round loom made by sculptor Lily Erb.

“There are lots of different fibers that make up this city,” Mundt says. “We’ll have people weave their Charlottesville experience into one big tapestry to represent the city as best we can.”

Diener and Mink are planning a staged production of Autumn Valentine, a song cycle for soprano and baritone with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and poetry by Dorothy Parker that addresses topics like intimacy and sexuality.

“The presentation forces us to ask ourselves important questions about our project: ‘Why does this matter to me? How could it matter to someone else?’” says Diener. “Even if we don’t get funding, the input we hear from SOUP guests will be invaluable.”

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Heartmeat

Describing themselves as “a band that plays super-cool music,” Heartmeat is the collective effort of musicians Frank Storey, Lilly Hartmetz and James Rios, who bring a variety of experience, from folk and jazz to alternative and funk. “All in all though, it’s the thrill of songwriting that really fuels the band,” says Storey.

Sunday, July 23. Donations accepted, 8pm. The Garage, 100 W. Jefferson St. thegaragecville.com.

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Arts

Stories of how failures lead to successes

Explore The Art of Failure with Devon Sproule (pictured), Lulu Miller and David Zahl at Meade Hall on March 6. Photo by Amelia Schmid

As consumers, we’re inundated by success. Hit records, blockbuster movies, the latest app.

Creators, on the other hand, are surrounded by failures. They churn out ideas—some brilliant, some bad—and create until something sticks.

How do they find the guts to fail their way to success? Three accomplished local artists are opening up in The Art of Failure, from The Makers Series co-hosted by Christ Episcopal Church, The Garage and New City Arts Initiative.

For musician Devon Sproule, failure is an invitation to stop scrambling so quickly.

“Trying to be successful in the music business is like trying to climb a never-ending ladder,” she says an e-mail. “You’re so busy trying to get to the next rung that it’s really hard to remember to stop and appreciate the view. There are people ahead of you that you assume have a better view, and there are people behind you that want yours. And the whole dang ladder is really rickety.”

She describes the summer of 2007 as a turning point, when she got sick—right before her appearance on the English TV show Later… with Jools Holland. “So even though this show introduced my music to a shitload of people, for the next few years, I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if I’d been at 100 percent,” she says. “Who knows, maybe my ladder-climbing would have accelerated even more, like it did for those annoyingly cute guys in Vampire Weekend, who also played that night.”

Author, editor and preacher David Zahl sees failure as the gateway to grace.

“The first five years of my own serious creative endeavor was one massive lesson in the pointlessness of trying to ‘get it right,’” he writes. “Failure is seldom something you can go around—you have to go through, even when every fiber of your being is saying not to.”

He describes hosting a conference in Pensacola, Florida, in the early years of his organization, Mockingbird. “We had planned for 200 people to register but only 24 could be bothered. It was super embarrassing, and we almost canceled ahead of time. I wasn’t even there, ’cause my wife had just had a baby. I remember thinking, ‘Maybe it’s time to throw in the towel on this entire project.’”

But that single “failed” conference led to the start of Mockingbird’s quarterly magazine, ongoing video production and best-selling publication.

“Contrary to my default psychology and much to my relief, [failure] has never proved to be the end of the world,” he writes.

Writer, reporter and co-host of NPR’s “Invisibilia,” Lulu Miller’s commitment to art requires falling off that ladder—a lot.

“The first draft of my first radio story was such a mess it was met with the words, ‘You could never make it in a newsroom,’” she writes. “I still remember the tears falling onto the script.”

Now, she seeks to understand why things fail. She draws a parallel to parkour, the sport of running, jumping and climbing around obstacles. “I want to try to become that fluid, that artful, that beautiful as I recalibrate a story to the edits and life thrown my way,” says Miller. “I want to be that reactive, that responsive to failure. I’m not there yet, but, man, am I trying. Every day.”

The gifts of failure are not reserved exclusively for artists. “All of us will make mistakes,” Miller says. “In life. In craft. In policy. If we can open our ears to hear why people are angry, bored, confused, not moved, then we can hear the path to making ourselves, our town and our work better. As if the negative imprint of failure is the blueprint for how to succeed.”

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Arts

Folk musician Claire Hitchins finds her voice on These Bodies

Inspired by Appalachian music and the mountains, Claire Hitchins’ folk melodies tell stories of nature, faith, peace and resistance. She performs with her bandmates Alex Bingham and Evan Ringel at C’ville Coffee on Wednesday. Photo by Paul Robert Davis

One year ago, Claire Hitchins took a leap of faith. While volunteering on the West Coast, Hitchins sat in her room and recorded her music for the first time, with the help of an old laptop and GarageBand. Within a few months, the award-winning podcast “On Being” featured Hitchins and her music, and her SoundCloud listenership grew into the thousands.

“Strangers heard my music and I got such amazing feedback,” Hitchins says. “To put something out into the world and have all this energy come back, it got me thinking, ‘Well, maybe there’s something to this.’”

After a five-hour jam session with her producer and current bassist, Alex Bingham, Hitchins entertained an idea she once thought impossible. She came back to the East Coast, raised more than $13,000 through Kickstarter, ditched GarageBand and made her first professional album, These Bodies.

Before the surreal experience of producing her album in the same studio as Lucinda Williams and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Hitchins had stepped into a formal studio only once. She could count on one hand how many times she performed her music in front of an audience. Though she grew up in Roanoke playing cello, participating in musicals and strumming the guitar and banjo, Hitchins is still getting used to calling herself a folk musician, instrumentalist and singer-songwriter.

“I remember feeling like I was never going to use the word ‘y’all,’” Hitchins says. “It wasn’t until I left Roanoke that I fully embraced the y’all.”

When she was younger, Hitchins spent many Friday nights at what she calls “the place to be”—a country store’s weekly jamboree in nearby Floyd. She remembers bands playing bluegrass and gospel music, while spectators slapped and stomped their feet.

“That was the first place I think I really experienced that richness of culture that is so distinctively Appalachian,” Hitchins says. “Neither of my parents are from the South. …My sense of belonging to this place of Appalachia didn’t feel like a birthright.”

Music and the mountains helped Hitchins come to terms with the complex history of rural Appalachia and the inheritance of a legacy that she found difficult to comprehend. Amid guitar and banjo chords that bounce from variation to variation, the deep pluck of a bass or electric guitar and the soft crescendo of a trombone accompanying Hitchins’ powerful voice, she envelops listeners in her vision of an Appalachia that is peaceful, harmonic and bold all at once.

Nature writers such as Mary Oliver also helped form Hitchins’ “inner landscape.” While studying at UVA, Hitchins initially thought she would be an environmental science major. But, after enrolling in her first course, she realized she would rather be in the outdoors than studying it.

Hitchins grew up steeped not only in the sounds and surroundings of Appalachia, but the language of sacred stories found in Judeo-Christian narratives, as well. Never seeking to exclude, impose or write liturgical music, Hitchins picks themes that resonate with a variety of listeners and that people can relate to regardless of their religious language. “Oh Moses, well he never saw the promised land / And Martin only saw it in his dream / But when I hear the thunder on the mountain / then I can almost hear that mighty stream,” Hitchins sings in “When It Rains,” inviting her listeners to what she refers to as a “holy space of being present.”

“There’s something about music that feels inherently sacred to me,” Hitchins says. “There is a certain reverence that I bring to my music that is informed by my faith.”

Hitchins also finds herself informed by artists like Mavis Staples and other musicians she identifies as courageous voices for justice during social movements like the fight for civil rights.

“Powerful women that have sung truth to power in different ways keep me going at times when it feels frivolous to be making music, especially when there are all these pressing needs,” Hitchins says. “These Bodies is not specifically political or topical, but I hope that there is a kernel of my desire for a more just and peaceful world.”

In addition to kicking off a tour in six states to promote These Bodies, Hitchins has been advocating across the country for that idea. Inspired by the Sioux Nation’s “sacred relationship with the natural world,” Hitchins traveled to Standing Rock Indian Reservation to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. She also attended the inauguration of President Donald Trump and sang with a protest group all day—even as police dragged them away.

As she wades into new waters, Hitchins finds sustenance in Charlottesville’s supportive music and arts community. The first time she shared her music publicly was at The Garage during her final year at UVA, just as she was about to leave Charlottesville. She says she didn’t anticipate another show, then last fall Hitchins celebrated her new album with a release show at The Haven and started a New City Arts Initiative residency.

Now, she’s preparing for another homecoming. Next Wednesday, February 15, at 7pm, Hitchins and bandmates Bingham and Evan Ringle will perform at C’ville Coffee, with Erin Lunsford opening.

“People have been so generous of their time and willing to share what they’ve learned and give good advice,” Hitchins says. “It feels like I’m in the right place.”