After a short-term disappearing act during which he elaborated primarily through what he now admits were drunken tweets and blog posts, at times confusing, distressing, and even prone to vanishing, ousted IS Venue head Jeyon Falsini finally shed some light on the sudden Sunday night closing of the music hall, attributing the lag in customers to the general economic climate and the summertime absence of students.
“It was a case of a successful business owner overstretching himself in an unknown city during difficult financial times,” he says.
A statement posted on the web site for Magnus Music LLC, his separate booking and promotion business, points to the discovery of a nearly-expired liquor license as the key element leading Mo Roman, the Richmond-based owner of both IS and its accompanying downstairs tapas restaurant Si, to throw in the towel.
(more)You can count on the raucous rockers and self-professed lords of Meridian Street to give you a Halloween to remember — one way or another. (Last year they played diva songs in drag and billed themselves as the Queens of Belmont.)
The Kings Of Belmont - The Jerk Store [demo]
The Kings Of Belmont - Git R Done
The Kings Of Belmont - South Bound
The Kings Of Belmont - Beg For More
The Kings Of Belmont - Sway
The Kings Of Belmont - Talking To Myself
Local songwriter Travis Elliott opens. Come in costume, win fame and glory. And prizes, oh yes, the prizes — top dog will take home an electric guitar.
Jazzy funk from Baltimore. Guitar jams from Tucker Rogers and Space Cadet 7 warm things up.
Basshound - Till I Hit The Ground
Basshound - Ranura Bastarda [live]
Space Cadet 7 - Killer Octopus
It’s a shame to further rain on what is already a fairly gloomy period for Charlottesville music, but prior email inquiries about this one apparently went missing for a while:
The Barking Cherry House Concerts run by local songwriter Len Jaffe and his partner Ginny Gubser have come to an end after the pair parted company for personal reasons. For four years, the Barking Cherry series hosted quiet early-evening acoustic shows in a private home from folk songwriter types like Taylor Pie and Bill Staines— the latter of whom sold out four times. Jaffe pulled the plug on the remainder of this year’s season in a note to his email list last month.
Checking in from his new digs in Richmond via email:
We had a good time doing the shows for the four years, but I felt that it never found a connection to the local music scene at large. Why we couldn’t get 35 people in chairs for almost every show when I know there is an audience for acoustic music in Charlottesville is beyond my understanding. I also felt we never connected to the existing music community, either. For the most part, we were ignored. Had we gone ahead with this season and got little more response that we had previously, it would have been our last, anyway.
Some of this same frustration also turned up in Jaffe’s impassioned memorial guest essay in the Daily Progress after Gravity Lounge was forced to close in April, but overall he may have had the best response of all to the recent problem of waning music venues: taking matters into his own hands.
Like her bandmates, Nickel Creek fiddler Sara Watkins started out as a child prodigy, turning heads in California with her shredding long before the success of her trio in the early Aughts and their subsequent hiatus. These days she’s hyping her self-titled debut as a soloist, a more songwriter-oriented outing issued on the same Nonesuch that brought you the latest from Wilco and Chris Thile and produced by none other than Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.
Also featuring acclaimed six-piece acoustic bluegrass act the Infamous Stringdusters, who are labelmates to Watkins’ flatpicking guitar maniac brother and fellow Nickel Creeker Sean, as well as the Duhks and the Seldom Scene, and who reportedly rocked Bel Rio pretty hard last time they came through.
The Infamous Stringdusters - You Can’t Handle The Truth
The Infamous Stringdusters - Won’t Be Coming Back
Haunted singer-songwriter Elvis Perkins‘ father died of AIDS after portraying serial killer Norman Bates in Psycho, and his mother was on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11th. It’s no wonder, then, that his folk-rock tunes sometimes dip into dark and reflective Leonard Cohen territory — his new release is The Doomsday EP, based around two versions of the track which originally appeared on the self-titled album he released this past spring.
Elvis Perkins In Dearland - Slow Doomsday
Elvis Perkins In Dearland - Shampoo
90’s-rocker-gone-acoustic A.A. Bondy opens.
buy tickets onlineTalking Head David Byrne’s well-documented love of exotic music brought him most recently to Forro In The Dark, who play a special syncopated branch of Northeastern Brazilian folk music, reinvented with electronic instruments for downtown Manhattan clubs.
Forro In The Dark - Nonsensical
Local duo Beleza Brasil opens with a similar sort of fusion, mixing samba and Brazilian jazz with blues.
Beleza Brasil - Water To Drink
Beleza Brasil - Fever
There’s a cryptic new post by local music man Jeyon Falsini on the web site for Magnus Music LLC, the name under which he ran his ambitious and hyperactive independent concert booking and promotion business before taking the reins at the recently scuttled iS Venue last year. Notably, the post title treats (more)
Nick Zammuto sets up the stage before he and cellist Paul de Jong inaugurate The Southern.“Welcome to the maiden voyage of this venue,” guitarist Nick Zammuto whispered into his microphone to a packed house Friday night before introducing the first song— song being a relative term here— that he and his cohort, cellist Paul de Jong performed. The two constitute the New York-based guitar and cello duo, The Books, whose ambitious music was appropriately booked for the opening night of the revamped Gravity Lounge space, now known as The Southern.
The Books belong to a growing population of multimedia artists, meshing their acoustic folk with “found sounds” from film or recording clips– “collage music,” according to Zammuto. Beginning the evening with a new piece, a projector screened talking heads (more)
Canadian quartet Great Lake Swimmers put a new spin on folk-rock. PUBLICITY PHOTO
Jay Pun and Morwenna Lasko reinterpret traditional acoustic sounds. PUBLICITY PHOTO
The iS music venue lasted barely a year before shutting its doors Monday morning.For the little venue that could, the iS music lounge announced Monday that it iS no longer in business.
When managers Stew Hartman-Mart and Chris Dunbar announced in September 2008 the re-opening of the Starr Hill music venue as the Si restuarant/iS music lounge double whammy, the regional music scene rejoiced for the re-addition of the venerable venue back into the live music scene. But perhaps those who claim Starr Hill was cursed are right— as Sunday night, September 28, the Twitter feed of the venue’s booker, Jeyon Falsini, announced that Is was closing.
According to Falsini, Sunday night’s show featuring Tennessee-based punk rockers Black Diamond Heavies and local hard-rockers Corsair and Channel 43 was the venue’s final (more)
By turns folky, progressive, and virtuosic, fiery fiddler Morwenna Lasko and guitar wizard Jay Pun (Berklee grads both) use this rare Live Arts show to celebrate the release of their new album, Chioggia Beat, which also features a new band including bass wizard Pete Spaar, soulful former C-ville singer Ezra Hamilton and other noteworthy guests. Award-winning folk duo The Honey Dewdrops open.
Morwenna Lasko and Jay Pun - B-Loose
The Honey Dewdrops - Nowhere To Stand
The Honey Dewdrops - Fly Away Free
Boston folk fusion quartet The David Wax Museum puts American and Mexican traditional music on display in the same case, all with a Japanese dude on picking away on dobro and mandolin.
The David Wax Museum - Colas
The David Wax Museum - Beekeeper
The David Wax Museum - Jalopy Heart
Also featuring Hunter Gatherer.
Boston folk fusion quartet The David Wax Museum puts American and Mexican traditional music on display in the same case, all with a Japanese dude on picking away on dobro and mandolin.
The David Wax Museum - Colas
The David Wax Museum - Beekeeper
The David Wax Museum - Jalopy Heart
Miss Tess and her Bon Ton Parade open.
Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade - Streetcorner
Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade - Song For A Southern Boy
Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade - Pokey McMumbles
Boston folk fusion quartet The David Wax Museum puts American and Mexican traditional music on display in the same case, all with a Japanese dude on picking away on dobro and mandolin.
The David Wax Museum - Colas
The David Wax Museum - Beekeeper
The David Wax Museum - Jalopy Heart
Also featuring guitarist Miles Pierce.
Annual fringe-of-town rock blowout with scores of local performers. With 51 bands on the schedule, you’re probably better off checking crozetmusicfestival.com for specifics.
Rockin’ teenage power trio.
The Wave - My Robot
The Wave - Sometimes
The Wave - Little People
The Wave - Sometimes
Indie rock and Wilco-flavored alt-country from Thomas Orgren, former guitarist for Dismemberment Plan-approved local maniacs Cataract Camp, who moved from DC to LA for this band after famously Pitchfork-panned former Dismemberment Plan frontman Travis Morrison decided to dissolve his most recent band the Hellfighters this past spring, upending Orgren’s regular gig. With Bride Of The Narwhal.
Wires In The Walls - Take Care
Folk-rock quartet. Also featuring Caleb L’Etoile’s “Stolen Arms” project.
Jazzy country tunes from a Boston conservatory quartet whose bassist leader landed an approving nod from highbrow jazz mag Downbeat while still in high school. Also featuring Old School Freight Train guitarist Jesse Harper and Richmond’s No BS Brass Band.
Lake Street Dive - Love To Food
Lake Street Dive - Be Cool
Jesse Harper and His Best Intentions - Memphis
Jesse Harper and His Best Intentions - Falling
Tastefully muted folk-pop college-fave songwriter and his beloved five-piece “Sixers” band. Opening: Dawn Landes and shameless local pop-rockers The Sometime Favorites, the latter slinging free copies of a new EP.
Dawn Landes - Bodyguard
The Sometime Favorites - All Along
The Sometime Favorites - What You Wanted
The Sometime Favorites - We Are
The Sometime Favorites - Can’t Stop Fighting It
Camel-walk your way down to the former Gravity space for another raucous set by these twangy weirdo-rockers, Southern cornballs all around to the point of hilarity even before they add the songs about fried chicken and luchadores. You might want to wear ratty old clothes just in case they start throwing food at the audience again.
The Mad Tea Party opens.
buy tickets onlineLocal songwriter Tom Proutt performs on the patio with longtime comrade Emily Gary.
Tom and Emily - Icons Of Faith
Indie-folk singer John Ashley and concert series organizer Keith Morris also take to the stage to round out the night, with fiery foot-stomping guitarist and folk singer Paul Curreri sitting in with Morris’ band.
Keith Morris - Live Candy EP
Snowday [live]
Billy Weir’s Dress [live]
Baby Saves World [live]
Waltzing [live]
Candy Apples [March Rosetta remix]
Diminutive classically trained Boston singer-songwriter performs Joni and Ella-inspired folk-rock tunes on guitar and mandolin.
Sarah Blacker - I Should Speak
Sarah Blacker - Sandpiper
Sarah Blacker - Smell Of Caramel
Classic rock and folk. Showing up in costume will get you $2 off the cover and possibly a $50 payoff if yours is deemed one of the best. (I’m crazy Hook face man! Give me some candy!)
Failure To Yield - While We Dance
Mardi Gras calls for funky New Orleans horns. These are from Roanoke, but they’ll do. Wear a thematically appropriate costume and maybe you’ll win something, get clocked in the head with beads, etc.
The Big Lick Brass Band - Ain’t No Shame In My Game
Beleza Brasil plays Latin jazz and samba fused with blues
Beleza Brasil - Water To Drink
Beleza Brasil - Fever
This Wes-influenced local jazz guitarist is an alum of Henry Mancini’s band
Live band karaoke, per usual, but this time around the fella with the best rock star costume will take home fifty bucks.
African, Latin, and funk from the local drummer and guitarist Jamal Millner
Jammy acoustic folk and bluegrass
Second Draw - Water
Second Draw - The River
Second Draw - Take Me
Second Draw - So Many Dreams Of Love
Second Draw - Distant Star
Second Draw - Back To Me
Traditional Irish music on guitar and flute . Lesson workshops presented by BRIMS beforehand.
The pop-rock singer-songwriter and Floydfest fave strips down and goes it alone.
William Walter and Company - Sunflower [live]
William Walter and Company - All The Best [live]
William Walter and Company - Alright [live]
William Walter and Company - Border Crosser [live]
William Walter and Company - Myspace
Grab yer fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, or bass. (And fake beard, if necessary.)
Celebrated local blues guitarist with a hard-hitting power trio that melts your face off and then delves into funk and soul just long enough for it to congeal again for another round.
Acoustic quintet plays plays energetic jazz, bluegrass, and rock.
Now-local transplanted New Orleans musicians play funk, rock, and covers
British band classics. Albemarle Pipes and Drums opens (if playing outside the door as you walk in qualifies).
Reunion show for the local old-time crew
Bono and bassist Adam Clayton perform September 16 in Toronto.Less than a week before the Charlottesville U2 show, the event hadn’t sold out, and the prices appeared to be dropping. Some $30 tickets were offered for $19, the $95 tickets for as little as $71, and the $250s appeared as low as $130. And with just six days before Charlottesville’s own U2 concert, the head of the world’s biggest ticket reseller was advising would-be concert-goers to hold off a little longer.
“Wait out the weekend, and see where ticket prices fall,” said Joellen Ferrer, the communications director for StubHub, the eBay-owned service that links ticket buyers and sellers.
As of Friday, September 25, StubHub members were advertising nearly 1,800 tickets for the October 1 show at Scott Stadium. If the venue holds 60,000, that’s about three percent of all seats.
“That’s actually quite a high amount,” says Ferrer, and that’s why she was predicting (more)
PHOTO BY STEPHANIE GARCIA
Legendary New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones brutally laid the smackdown on Red Light’s high-flying major-label Charlottesville pop-rockers Parachute August 15 via Twitter. But despite the depths of his disdain (he actually coined the phrase “MIT poop wizard” in their honor), he has just been trumped here by what essentially amounts to a music review SWAT team.
The Singles Jukebox, a blog which started as a column in the now-defunct online music mag Stylus, is a sort of roundup rodeo in which several prominent critics from publications like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone review current pop singles, leaving behind one short blurb apiece and an aggregate score.
MusicToday has released what may be the first public Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds acoustic performance, a show that took place right here in Charlottesville at the now defunct Prism Coffeehouse on April 22, 1993. This show predated both Under the Table and Dreaming and Remember Two Things, though some of the 23 songs played this evening would later debut on those discs. The digital download costs $13.99.
Rich literary experiments drive The Decemberists’ sound. PUBLICITY PHOTO
Lush, multi-layered, keyboard-heavy indie-pop that blends acoustic and electric elements and dreams big (somewhat warranted, since they’re the first act signed to the new Chop Shop label founded by primetime placement powerhouse Alexandra Patsavas). With Chicago rockers Yourself And The Air.
Yourself And The Air - So You’ve Come To Mingle
Charley Patton enthusiasts Eden Brower and John Heneghan’s NYC-based East River String Band is an acoustic duo which plays old country blues from the 20’s and 30’s. One member member on ukulele and the other plays kazoo (but, regrettably, both also play other more conventional instruments as well).
Eden and John’s East River String Band - Drunken Barrel House Blues
Eden and John’s East River String Band - Ain’t No Tellin’
Alt-country songwriter Carlton James opens.
Carlton James - St. Augy
Carlton James - Smile Boys
Carlton James - Dig A Hole
Carlton James - Blue Moon Please
Local alt-country songwriter Megan Huddleston plays alt-country with some help from Hackensaw Boys Jesse Fiske and Ferd Moyse. If you’re lucky, you might also catch Tom House here as well.
Nashville’s powerhouse Black Diamond Heavies sear together blues, punk, and garage rock with the sort of raw, primitive drive that can only come from a minimalist turn-on-a-dime lineup, and do so compellingly enough to draw like-minded Black Key Dan Auerbach away from his own duo to play producer.
Local garage rockers Corsair and Richmond punks Channel 43 open.
Honky-tonk rock band featuring Young Divorcees lap steel player Charlie Bell, drummer Josh Lowry, and other local luminaries. Alt-country songwriter Sarah White and her harmonizing buddy Sian Richards open as The (All New) Acorn Sisters.
If you only go to one alt-country show this harvest season, it should be this one.
Featuring Jim Waive and the Young Divorcees (who are not as bummed out as that sounds these days), Sarah White’s duo project The (All New) Acorn Sisters, a likely-whimsical set from Keith Morris, and rocking brothers-in-arms Pantherburn and Mister Baby.
Jim Waive and the Young Divorcees - Strike A Match
Keith Morris - Candy Apples
Pantherburn - The Octopus
Pantherburn - Mister Baby [demo]
Keith Morris - Snowday [live]
Keith Morris - Billy Weir’s Dress [live]
Keith Morris - Baby Saves World [live]
Keith Morris - Waltzing [live]
Keith Morris - Candy Apples [March Rosetta remix]
Local indie-pop quartet inspired by equal parts 60’s and 80’s. With D.C. rockers Typefighter.
Folk-rock and swing quartet, alternately Gypsy and Carnie, which is built around a husband-and-wife acoustic guitar duo, all sans percussion but with a hyperactive bouncing bass (no relation) which more than makes up for it.
Caravan Of Thieves - Rattlesnake
Emerging local indie rockers.
Drunk Tigers - Overland [live]
Drunk Tigers - Long Bored [live]
Drunk Tigers - Outer Banks Inner Peace [live]
Drunk Tigers - Winter Party [live]
Drunk Tigers - Sirens [live]
Energetic New England indie-pop quartet Hands And Knees opens alongside Drink Up Buttercup, the latter with plenty of auxiliary percussion (read: shakers, trash can lids) in tow.
Drink Up Buttercup - Mr Pie Eyes
Drink Up Buttercup - Gods And Gentlemen
Another dark folk and bluegrass project from Greg Jamie, guitarist and lead singer of New York hybrid folk band O Death. Sacred Harp opens.
Old school Charlottesville’s musicians reunite in big way when comic pianist The Reverend Billy C. Wirtz, on tour and in town for a show at Fellini’s, sits in with his buddies in the All-Stars and Stoned Wheat Things.
The local rockers play material from their recent Organica EP’s at a performance that’s being billed as both “sorta-acoustica” and one of their last of the season. RSVP via Facebook if you can.
Trees On Fire - In The Middle [via WXJM Live!]
Country and old-time. Wes Swing opens.
It’s about fifteen years too late for transplanted former Fluco and American Idol fan fave Chris Daughtry’s eponymous band to get away with making what effectively amounts to overproduced mid-90’s alt-rock, but they still managed to pull off one of the biggest debut albums in history a couple years back. You’ve probably heard bits of the new one, Leave This Town, all over mainstream rock radio — you know, right before you change the station.
Openers Theory Of A Deadman have been doing similar schlock for even longer than Daughtry, having apparently decided to shamelessly clone the vocal delivery of Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger after he signed on as producer for their 2002 debut.
Also featuring Cavo, who are probably pretty lame too. Judged by the company you keep, fellas.
buy tickets online
For the first installment of their “Musical Postcards” season, CUSO romps around Italy with Verdi, Mendelssohn, and featured bassoon player Elizabeth Roberts.
For the first installment of their “Musical Postcards” season, CUSO romps around Italy with Verdi, Mendelssohn, and featured bassoon player Elizabeth Roberts.
Hungarian string quartet performing Schumann and Beethoven.
Alternative rock, plus Worn In Red’s drummer Brad Perry puts on his turntable hat (no, not literally) for a set as DJ Nano.
He started as a Fluco, befriended Andy Waldeck, got daily gushes in the Progress when he was on American Idol in 2006, came back in triumph in 2007 to Starr Hill Music Hall, back again last year at the Paramount Theater— and now suddenly he leaps to ginormous John Paul Jones Arena. It’s Daughtry, Chris Daughtry; And tickets for the November 20 show ($31.50-$41.50) go on sale this Saturday, September 19 at 10am. (There’s time to buy them online and still rush to Court Square for the unveiling of a bust of Meriwether Lewis at 11am!)
Storyteller and songwriter James McMurtry returns to his Virginia roots. PUBLICITY PHOTO BY CRAIG SETH
Wow, seriously killer bill here: Canadian indie-folk hot property Great Lake Swimmers gets the marquee, as was the case with their Outback show a few months back, but those five gentle souls will be joined by The Wooden Birds, a stripped-down new project from Andrew Kenny of indie rockers American Analog Set, and up-and-coming songwriter Sharon Van Etten.
Great Lake Swimmers - Pulling On A Line
buy tickets onlineGlam rock youngsters with a love of 70’s Bowie. With indie rockers Your Spirit Animal In The Unreal City and Dangerósa.
Christian rock. Serena Ryder and Green River Ordinance open.
buy tickets onlineThe usual party line on 90’s pop crooner Bryan Adams is that the almost universally beloved “Summer Of ‘69″ is his only redemption for a decade filled with power ballad nuggets of cheese written for PG-13 movies. Here’s the problem with that theory: CHEESE IS DELICIOUS.
Adams’ 2007 show at the Paramount was gr… oh, wait, no, that was the other guy.
buy tickets onlineAvant-garde NYC underground rap trio Anti-Pop Consortium bring the electronic experimentation of Warp Records to hip hop, vaguely sharing a spirit, if not a sound, with the disco dorks in !!! and the prog-rockers in Battles (also dorks, probably).
Anti-Pop Consortium - Volcano [Four Tet remix]
Anti-Pop Consortium - Born Electric
The Reliable Narrators and Bristol open.
buy tickets onlinePop pianist Ingrid Michaelson, known just a couple years back primarily as occasional songwriter to the stars of the small screen (by which we mean mostly Zach Braff and Katherine Heigl, but also whoever the hell is on One Tree Hill), has since graduated to headlining tours, songs with string sections, and an age that starts with a 3. Greg Holden and Johnny Marnell open.
Athens, GA alt-folkie and Phosphorescent centerpiece Mathew Houck is worth a Will Oldham comparison or two, but he also loves Willie Nelson so dearly that he put out a tribute album in February and was promptly invited to perform at this year’s installment of Farm Aid.
Phosphorescent - A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise
buy tickets online
Gleefully retro 1920’s swing band with the occasional blues number
ACME Swing Mfg. Co. - Everybody Loves ACME
Highly acclaimed Nashville singer-songwriter Tom House sings strong but otherwise fairly straightforward folk and alt-country tunes, except for when he’s making musical adaptations out of the works of William Faulkner.
Also featuring, as usual, a set from organizer Keith Morris and his Crooked Numbers.
Check out this recent live EP:
Keith Morris - Snowday [live]
Keith Morris - Billy Weir’s Dress [live]
Keith Morris - Baby Saves World [live]
Keith Morris - Waltzing [live]
Keith Morris - Candy Apples [March Rosetta remix]
Dedicated fans would also do well to inquire about the upcoming house show hosted by Tom Proutt (or — credit to Keith on this one — Tom’s Tom House House Concert).
Old-school local talent-cum-festival-fave Reverend Billy (who, just in case his promises to “Rev it up” haven’t already given it away, is not actually ordained in any meaningful capacity) performs Foxworthy-meets-keyboard musical comedy with Southern leanings which you might nominally file under blues and gospel when you stop laughing. (His latest album is called “Pianist Envy.”)
Our bluegrass props of the week go to Grace Van’t Hof of Asheville bluegrass quartet Silver Dagger, who actually won a statewide science fair in high school by building a banjo.
Jazz and opera singer Susanna Kurner performs with her new jazz trio.
Jazz and world beat from the extraordinary local drummer and frequent collaborator Heather Maxwell.
Robert Jospé and Inner Rhythm - Blue Blaze
Robert Jospé and Inner Rhythm - Blue Rumba
Robert Jospé and Inner Rhythm with Heather Maxwell - Malado
Heather Maxwell - African Women
Heather Maxwell - Ashanti Boy
Heather Maxwell - Boloci
Heather Maxwell - Can’t Take My Man
Heather Maxwell - Orphan’s Lullaby
Heather Maxwell - Surrender
Blues-based open jam
The local singer-songwriter plays a quiet show at Lovingston’s favorite treasure trove.
The extremely creepy, somewhat ecologically-minded, partially Heath Ledger-helmed animated video for Modest Mouse’s latest single “King Rat” came out about a month ago. After overcoming the heebie-jeebies (mostly stemming from the part where the whales start skinning the humans) we finally bought the track from Amazon, at which point we noticed that the “Composer” field in the metadata tag pointed to former Hackensaw Boys bassist and sorta-soloist Tom Peloso.
Royalty structures can be considerably friendlier to songwriters than performers in what’s left of the record business, so this would have been filed under “local boy done good” even if the song wasn’t cool, which it definitely is.
