A country legend! WB sitcom star Reba McEntire opens.
buy tickets onlineSo yeah, even though Fleet Fox J. Tillman and his indie-rock whiskers were this whole big thing when he played at the UVA Chapel a while back, the truth is that gentle folk balladeer Sam Beam is pretty much the granddaddy of that whole bearded bard trend, both in the got-here-first sense and also goodness-lookit-that-thing. After attending VCU as an undergrad, he began to study film in graduate school, but found himself quickly drawn onto a totally different but equally potentially disastrous artistic course when his halfhearted initial monophonic demo submissions to Sub Pop were immediately flipped into his debut album. Its successor, 2004’s Our Endless Numbered Days, was a titan of a release for the legendary Seattle record label, after which he mostly laid low for the next few years save for a couple of EP’s, including one with Calexico, quite possibly the world’s only indie-spaghetti-western band. By the time last May’s Around The Well rolled around two albums later, he was ready to move into full-on pack-rat mode, compiling outtakes and B-sides from across the years, most notably a Garden State-approved acoustic reinterpretation of the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” which traded the signature Jimmy Tamborello synthesizer confetti for a nearly excruciating degree of self-restraint.
Iron and Wine - Southern Anthem
Iron and Wine - Naked As We Came
Iron and Wine - Jesus The Mexican Boy
Iron and Wine - Innocent Bones
Iron and Wine - Boy With A Coin
Iron and Wine - Belated Promise Ring
Iron and Wine - Woman King
Iron and Wine - Lion’s Mane
Both a Mark Ronson pet project and Unsigned Hype column alum, Wale is a DC rapper of Nigerian descent who first turned heads with his 2008 “Mixtape About Nothing,” Seinfeld-themed throughout but for its most ambitious bones, one of which was the key track about Kramer which just ruminated on Michael Richards’ infamous racist freakout.
But oh, college hip hop audiences, how fickle you are — when his proper debut album came out in November, it kinda flopped relative to expectations, and even relative to this spring’s big debut by grilled-American-on-Wonderbread frat-rap labelmate Asher Roth, who himself underperformed despite a rather impressive hype team and the popular Weezer-sampling single “I Love College.”
Then again, maybe the students will roll out en masse to UVA’s concrete-fishbowl Student Activities Building after all; remember, they just don’t buy music anymore.
DC’s UCB opens in a nod to Wale’s own go-go roots.
Communal sing-alongs of indie rock four-track wizard Sufjan Stevens‘ Christmas songs. Sheet music and space heaters provided; bring instruments and warm clothes.
Basically the reigning queen of indie-pop at this point (having apparently overthrown Natasha Khan or whatever), multi-instrumentalist songwriter Annie Clark sometimes coughs up tunes that are a touch darker than anything related to her former gigs as guitarist for Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan, which we realize doesn’t exactly narrow things down a whole lot. Rather, consider that the twists and turns in her ambitious chamber pop arrangements led her to essentially recruit Pattern Is Movement to serve as her backing band for the last tour, where they ended up performing material which was recorded with the Midlake guys as the backdrop, both wrinkles in lineup and logistics which are somehow a fitting match for the thick complexity of her layer-cake orchestration.
(If you want free tickets, all you have to do is psychoanalyze her, which is easier than it sounds because our standards for competence on this one are extremely low. You’re welcome.)
Swedish experimental electronic duo Wildbirds and Peacedrums open with tightly woven samples and percussion in the vein of Bjork or The Knife.
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Crushing local heavy metal band
Horsefang - River Of Dead Horses
Horsefang - We Will Use Your Dead As Vessels
Horsefang - Plaguebreaker
Horsefang - Genesis In The Retort
Local bluegrass outfit Walker’s Run’s prolonged existence started back when the members were still students about a decade ago. Brennan Gilmore, then the mandolin player, put the group on hold when he moved to Africa in 2002, reconvening it in 2008 and switching to guitar after returning a few years later. With fleet-fingered Andy Thacker now in the mandolin slot, the newer lineup recently recorded a mostly-live EP at Lime Kiln Theater in Lexington. “Working/living in conflict areas in Africa has fueled much of my recent songwriting,” says Gimore, pointing specifically to the restless pulse of “Kakuma,” which he says is about a Sudanese refugee. There’s also a new album planned for sometime next year, for which you can consider the studio recording of “Natalie” a teaser.
The new EP:
Walker’s Run - Road To Romney/Crooked Tree [live]
Walker’s Run - Natalie
Walker’s Run - Misery River/Fire On The Mountain [live]
Walker’s Run - Kakuma [live]
Walker’s Run - East Virginia Blues [live]
Walker’s Run - Ain’t Nobody Gonna Miss Me [live]
Older tunes:
Walker’s Run - Elzic’s Farewell [which is awesome]
Walker’s Run - Moonshiner
The Honey Dewdrops open.
The Honey Dewdrops - Nowhere To Stand
The Honey Dewdrops - Fly Away Free
Mountain blues and gospel from Monticello Road’s former guitarist, who will be celebrating the release of his new solo EP, Walk On The Water, and also reconvening with the old band for a reunion set.
Vaden Cox - My Spirit Aches
Vaden Cox - Walk On The Water
Indie rock. Also featuring Drunk Tigers and Vevlo Eel.
Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand - There’s Room In My Will
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]
DC songwriter Justin Jones and his five-piece band The Driving Rain play soulful alt-country and Americana.
Justin Jones and the Driving Rain - Seminole Town
Justin Jones and the Driving Rain - Long Way Down
Justin Jones - All Our Noise [live]
Also featuring the relentlessly-touring road maniacs of American Aquarium, who play country-fried roots-rock not unlike a cowboy Springsteen with a light touch of genuine Southern influence — much like their Raleigh home, actually, which, as you may remember, also gave us the like-minded Ryan Adams a decade or so ago.
American Aquarium - Katherine Belle
American Aquarium - Mary, Mary
Probably among the most hight highly regarded brass ensembles in the world, the five Canadian virtuoso brainiacs who spend all their time studying up on the likes of Vivaldi, Beethoven and Wagner will spend the evening here instead performing “The Little Drummer Boy,” “Frosty The Snowman, and “The Dreidel.” Yet another reason why January can’t come soon enough.
buy tickets onlineAward-winning sexagenarian female guitarist and blues singer who learned how to conjure the grime so essential to her trade from the sorts of Delta bluesman that usually can’t be heard without a field recorder and a sturdy pair of hiking boots — most notably John Hurt, but also Son House and Robert Johnson, the latter being the subjects of her recent tribute albums. No definitive word yet as to whether she had to sell her soul to the devil in order to accomplish all this.
buy tickets onlineThe acclaimed alt-country singer and repeat C-ville performer ditches his usual band and instead performs all those songs about how life wears him down as a soloist, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar.
Andy Friedman - Road Trippin’ Daddy
Andy Friedman - Weary Things
Andy Friedman and the Other Failures - Idaho
Andy Friedman and the Other Failures - Probably Shouldn’t Call
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]
Keith Morris - Candy Apples
Quite possibly the most obvious bill in recent memory: witty uke-playing NYC songwriter and author M. David Hornbuckle wails and/or reads alongside Mark Rock, the nuttier side of Falsies frontman Peter Markush. They’re joined by Miller’s/Blue Moon staple Barling and Collins, on whom all sides are nutty.
Peter Markush - Home
Barling and Collins - (That’s Right) I’m Looking At Your Girlfriend
Rather impressive that it’s been only ten months since we said this last: Jason Pollock, the former Seven Mary Three grunge-rock guitarist gone home recording fanatic, has a new album coming out. They’ll be playing “Wine Diamonds” in its entirety here, which Pollock describes as a record about “watching the clock spin faster and trying to decide which hand is more important,” and you’ll be able to grab a copy when they’re done if you like what you hear. Warming you up beforehand will be roots-rocker Brian Patrick, who also has a new album of his own on the way. Absurd number of additional older MP3s from both acts after the jump.
The Pollocks - Red Lights Coming
The Pollocks - Kiss
The Pollocks - Here With Her
The Pollocks - Girls Only Want To Dance
The Pollocks - Call My Name
The Pollocks - Before I’m Free
Progressive bluegrass powerhouse with the instrument lineup of a hillbilly porch swing and the heart and quirky humor of a jamband, all buried under three-part vocal harmonies.
buy tickets onlineNice Jenkins frontman Rob Cheatham’s country-rock band (who, incidentally, are currently hard at work on their debut album and hope to have something ready by early 2010).
Gunchux - Suburban Landscape
Gunchux - The Tour
Gunchux - Williamstown
Gunchux - You Crushed My Heart
Gunchux - Walk Up 21st St.
North Carolina bluegrass band Sanctum Sully opens.
Sanctum Sully - Winters Gone
Sanctum Sully - Stable Ground
Sanctum Sully - Po Boy
Sanctum Sully - Old Home Place
Sanctum Sully - Minor Swing
Sanctum Sully - Cornfed
Local screamo and proto-metal youngsters. With Zero Presence, After Colony, and Navaeh, the last of whom owe quite a bit to Taproot and Chevelle but promise to leave both the eyeliner and Auto-Tune at home.
Folk singer-songwriter Sam Beam is the beard behind Iron & Wine. PHOTO BY EMILY WILSON
Beam, who attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond as an undergraduate, originally utilized film as a creative outlet before friends convinced him to record the songs he was writing on the side. After signing to Sub Pop Records in 2002, he released four full-length albums to overwhelming critical acclaim — Paste Magazine named The Shepherd’s Dog one of the top ten albums of 2007, and many of his singles have been featured in places like The O.C., House, Grey’s Anatomy, Garden State, and Twilight, among others. Other recent PKG shows have included slide guitarist Derek Trucks at Old Cabell Hall, mash-up artist Girl Talk at John Paul Jones Arena, and annual Springfest headliners like OK Go and Ben Folds. This one starts at 8pm on Friday, February 5, and tickets go on sale Wednesday, December 2 at 10am; they cost $30, but UVA students can get in for $22.
Jazzy new project from several orphaned former Elephant Minor members
Local rock band.
Raw Dawg - Alibi
Raw Dawg - Dig
Raw Dawg - HOI
Bluesy rock from the Petersburg sextet and rocking blues from the Nelson county guitarist
Eli Cook - Static In The Blood
Christmas tunes
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The Blue Ridge Irish Music School presents a set from the mandolin and banjo player and traditional Irish singer. 1106 West Main Street.
Christmas music performed all day.
10:00-10:30 am: Bonnie and Friends
10:45-11:15 am: Charlottesville-Albemarle Saxophone Ensemble
11:30-12:00 pm: Mou’a Vahine Polynesian Dance Co.
12:15-12:45 pm: Burley Middle School Young Women’s Chorus
1:00-1:30 pm: Cale Chamber Singers
1:45-2:15 pm: Monticello High School Chorus
2:30-3:00 pm: Blue Ridge Irish Music School
3:15-3:45 pm: Wilson School of Dance
4:00-4:30 pm: Free Union Country Singers
4:45-5:15 pm: Blue Ridge School
5:30-6:00 pm: Dance Explosion Studio
Audience members are given copies of the score at this annual fundraiser for the various UVA vocal groups and then invited to participate, thus presumably driving home the importance of properly trained ensembles.
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The leaders of the award-winning Kid Pan Alley children’s music program, including singer-songwriter-renaissance-woman and local favorite Terri Allard cap off their week-long residency at the school with a public performance with the kids.
Kid Pan Alley - My Shoes Are Spying On Me
Kid Pan Alley - My Dog Did My Homework
Kid Pan Alley - I Used To Know The Names Of All The Stars
Medieval Christmas music
Guitar and piano duo playing jazz, blues, and originals
Not quite a family band, strictly speaking, but close enough — The Fitzmaurice Band is a young and accordingly progressive Maryland bluegrass and alt-country quintet which sprung from a 2009 Hampton VA bluegrass festival with the titular twenty-year-old identical twin sisters fronting the band on guitar and bass after years of singing together as kids.
The Fitzmaurice Band - Cross Your Mind
The Fitzmaurice Band - California
The Fitzmaurice Band - Barely A Man
The Fitzmaurice Band - Annie Kay
Local songwriter Stone Aielli opens.
Strings and skins unite when the Chapman Stick player and African percussionist team up for an improv-heavy duo set.
Piano and guitar
“It’s happening,” Starr Hill Presents promoter Danny Shea said Tuesday, November 17, nearly a week and a half before the doors to the Jefferson Theater were set to open to the public for the first time in three years. And happen it did— despite the dust and renovation on Tuesday, a flash forward to Friday, November 27’s sold-out crowd lining up for wrist bands would quiet any naysayer scoffing at the possibility of the Charlottesville venue’s completion.
Originally opened in 1912, the theater has remained true to the look and feel of the early building and reopened as one glorious space for the first time in decades. Much of the plasterwork remains untouched, while the main level has been revamped with bars and a sound system to rival (more)
It’s the end of a dynasty in the silly sunglasses world.
C-ville kids: as usual, the annual First Night Virginia Teen Band Showcase will take place at the Music Resource Center on New Year’s Eve between 6pm and midnight. 30 minute sets, backline provided, all styles welcome, better than hanging out with your parents. Contact Chris Munson at or 434-296-1600 if you’re interested in performing.
DJ Melissa McKenna and Program director Brad Savage hand out free CDs containing new tracks by artists popular on their radio station, 106.1 The Corner, Wednesday night, November 18 on the Downtown Mall. The station is showcasing two of the on-disc artists at a Saturday night, November 21, concert at V. Earl Dickinson Theater, Bob Schneider and One Eskimo. Also playing at “Corner Lounge Live!” were Jesse Harper and Adrienne Young.
Jimmy in 2008.I think my wife and I don’t get out enough. We won two free tickets to the November 17 Jimmy Buffett concert in Charlottesville from a local newspaper’s contest. It was wonderful. We walked in from the law school smugly watching what appeared to be all of Virginia streaming into the John Paul Jones Arena.
The ginormous parking lots around the Arena were plastered with a special brand of tailgaters: guys in hula skirts and coconut bras, girls with shark pasties. Many sporting parrot, crab, and shark hats and some in shark and pirate costumes, all downing flagons of Caribbean-pastel margaritas mixed to the tunes of Jimmy and whining 12-volt blenders.
Some cars were decorated. A popular fixation were big shark fins duct-taped to the roof.
We approached JPJ and found (more)
Nice Jenkins pianist Dana Radcliffe breaks off with a solo singer-songwriter project, much like frontman Rob Cheatham before him, here in a trio configuration with resident badasses Matt Wyatt and Wells Hanley.
Local guitarist and occasional minstrel to the stars
When roots-rock guitarist Brian Patrick won Rapunzel’s legendary annual songwriting contest last month, he promptly made arrangements to record a live CD out at the Lovingston coffee shop. It’s go time; he needs a crowd for this to work well, so don’t you leave him hanging. Remember: yell loudly and enthusiastically, but also indistinctly and only during approved and expected intervals. And no soy bombs this time, OK?
The Brian Patrick Band - Tumbleweed
The Brian Patrick Band - Nowhere Left To Fall
The Brian Patrick Band - It Hurts Me More
The Brian Patrick Band - Don’t Believe In Me
The Brian Patrick Band - California
The Brian Patrick Band - Big Muddy
Singer-songwriter. With Sally Rose Monnes.
Four folky singer-songwriters performing in the round.
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Crews are putting the finishing touches on the 1912 Jefferson Theater in anticipation of its long-awaited re-opening as a four-level music hall. In this November 17 photo, the 1915 plasterwork by French sculptor Victor Pierret (he had to re-do his work after a devastating fire three years after the place opened) leaps out from an eggplant-colored background. Last time the Hook peeked in was nearly eight weeks ago when this space was filled with scaffolding.
Jon Spencer and Matt Verta-Ray: a little grease and grit doesn’t hurt in rockabilly. PUBLICITY PHOTO
Worn In Red brings back the raw intensity of Virginia post-hardcore music. PHOTO BY DREW DUKE
Our talented resident bluegrass and old-time fiddler wraps up her extensive tour with one more show before her head hits the pillow back at home. Multi-instrumentalist Matty Metcalfe and Anomoanan main man Ned Oldham open with their new duo project, appropriately dubbed “Old Calf.”
buy tickets onlineDelightfully silly guitar-and-keyboard indie pop. With local rising stars Drunk Tigers and beastly guitar+drum duo The Cinnamon Band, the latter of whom have toured alongside the Handsome Furs in the past.
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]
The Cinnamon Band - I’m Asking You
Hot Lava - Apple+Option+Fire
Celebrated indie-folk duo with local roots. Also featuring Nelly Kate and Tickley Feather.
Birdlips - Tire Chains
Birdlips - Some Kind Of Death
Nelly Kate - Sounding3
Nelly Kate - Soft Things
Nelly Kate - Often To Cry Yourself
Nelly Kate - Compassion
Nelly Kate - Found Sounds
Nelly Kate - Dink
Tickley Feather - Trashy Boys
Instrumental rock and R&B from the local guitar wizard
Jamal Millner’s Comrades - Break Out
“Afrolachian” performance of wild solos with Americana backdrops
Alt-folk duo. With pianist and songwriter Shannon Curtis.
Carleigh Nesbit and Carl Anderson - Three Steps Out The Door [live]
Carleigh Nesbit and Carl Anderson - Passing Through
Carleigh Nesbit and Carl Anderson - Train Song
Carleigh Nesbit - Three Steps Out The Door
Carleigh Nesbit - River Run Dry
Carleigh Nesbit - Turn On The Heat
Carleigh Nesbit - Your City Skies
Local folk singer Debbie Hunter and friends.
Photo by Andrew Shurtleff
Space-lovers who take their cues from Iron Maiden and 70’s rock. The Great Eastern and I Love You open.
Corsair - Last Night On Earth
Corsair - Space Is A Lonely Place
Corsair - Starcophagus
Buzzed-about glam-rock youngsters powered by brothers Daniel and Kevin Hivick, who use their keys and vocals to build up 70’s aesthetics and punk-rock theatrics, respectively.
Red Satellites - Dancing [demo]
Local newcomers Pompadour and Richmond’s American Tradition get things started.
Fuzzed-out, shoegazey, and thoroughly surreal dream-pop family band whose usually ambient, sometimes psychedelic, and occasionally downright nonsensical trappings on simple melodic motifs have shot them to the front of the class among Philadelphia’s indie rock exports. Local trio Manorlady opens with guitar and keyboard parts synchronized to video.
A Sunny Day In Glasgow - Failure
A Sunny Day In Glasgow - Ashes Grammar/Ashes Maths
Manorlady - Boy and Flippers [demo]
Manorlady - Red Juice [demo]
Local songwriter David Sickmen, now four years removed from his run with the Hackensaw Boys, premieres some of the songs he’s been working on since as well as a new band of youngsters to play them called the Bell Weather States. Also featuring local alt-country songstress Sarah White.
Sarah White - Apple In B Major
Sarah White - Half A Smile
Sarah White - Ply Me
Sarah White - Sweetheart
Sarah White - Where You’re Going
Fellini’s celebrates their five-year anniversary with their favorite junkyard rockers
Hot new Knoxville Americana quintet featuring mandolin player Cruz Contreras. How’s this for a back story: formerly known primarily as the brains behind his ex-wife Robinella’s jazz-twang backing band, Contreras gave up music cold-turkey for a while after they divorced in 2006 and became a truck driver instead. He gave it another shot shortly before being asked to perform at a friend’s funeral, which went so well (well, relatively speaking, given the circumstances) that he began to put a new band together with several members of the everybodyfields. The debut album was released in April, and he was playing Bonnaroo by June and Nashville’s venerable Ryman Auditorium by early November. So yeah, way to go, Fellini’s.
The Black Lillies - Whiskey Angel
The Black Lillies - There’s Only One
The Black Lillies - Midnight
The Black Lillies - Little Darlin’
The Black Lillies - Cruel
Folk and blues guitarist and singer with a Ph. D. in mid-Atlantic and Southern folklore.
Folk-rock singer-songwriter; with Mike Cvetanovich
Local folk duo with sweet vocal harmonies and a number of national awards under their belts.
The Honey Dewdrops - Nowhere To Stand
The Honey Dewdrops - Fly Away Free
UVA vocal ensemble delivers their annual Christmas program
buy tickets onlineContemporary bluegrass singer and fiddler. Grammy nominated progressive bluegrass ensemble the Seldom Scene open.
buy tickets onlineYour attention please: with Thanksgiving now solidly behind us, you finally have our permission to move forward with Christmassy holiday music without any of the scoldings we’d have handed out, say, prior to Halloween. Have at it.
