American roots band Annalivia gathers from the various branches of influence on folk music’s family tree. As the band tours in support of its latest album, The Same Way Down, Liz Simmons’ and Flynn Cohen’s vocals draw on a combination of Irish, Scottish, and old time Appalachian music, while Charlottesville native Bronwyn Keith-Hynes backs up […]
Bid boredom adieu with seven subtitled screenings at the University of Virginia’s French Film Festival. Award-winning Cameroonian director Jean-Pierre Békolo leads discussions on his filmmaking practices in the sci-fi erotic thriller Les Saignantes and the controversial political drama Le Président. Additional films run the gamut from a star-studded melodrama (De Rouille et d’Os, featuring Marion […]
Love you like a hurricane If I knew one thing, in 2004, it was that I was leaving Charlottesville. In 2003, when my wife came back from Baghdad, she didn’t want to be married anymore. The next day, she took my dog, Sapphire, for a run on O-hill, let her off the leash and into traffic. […]
Ever tried chocolate covered bacon? Now’s your chance. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, My Chocolate Shoppe is open for business! Located at 406 E. Main St. on the Downtown Mall, is open 11am-7pm Tuesday-Saturday, and 12-5pm on Sunday. Stop by for a box of treats for a loved one—or for yourself—this week. An elusive new Downtown Mall […]
The centennial celebration of Woody Guthrie’s birth is more than the remembrance of a great man’s life. It is a testament that his music endures, that the art has outlasted the artist. A wide range of musicians have paid homage to Woody Guthrie over the years, indicating the breadth of his legacy and the extent […]
The setting is 1960s rural North Carolina and two little girls have come to stay with their batty Aunt Patty in the wake of a younger sibling’s death. Y. York’s play adaptation of Getting Near to Baby offers a poignant look at grief through the eyes of children and adults, as Willa Jo and Little […]
Robbie Fulks broke through in the sweeping alt-country movement of the ’90s, but the stage was set earlier for Fulks, who learned traditional playing in a musical family that moved around the Appalachian South (and even called Charlottesville home for a short time). His penchant for glibness and dexterity explains the inclusion of Michael Jackson, […]
From the moment you pull in, there is something endearingly unapologetic about the set-up. The converted house suffers gently from dilapidation; the menus are dog-eared (with corrections scrawled in the margins); it’s grab your own utensils from a set of plastic drawers; and Bandamax is generally blaring from the TV set. All this is a […]
For one weekend, Four County Players transforms its intimate 50-seat Black Box Theater into an upscale cabaret for Songs in the Cellar, a broad musical revue featuring an all-star local cast in gender-swapped roles. Imagine Little Orphan Annie as a boy with a hard knock life, or picture the infamous barber Sweeney Todd as a […]
Columbus, Ohio native Philip Cogley plays innovative art rock via his one-man project The Saturday Giant by using live looping and intricate multi-instrumental layers of indie pop-rock to craft hundreds of unique performances each year. Cogley’s strong belief in the relationship between freedom and imperfection steers his music clear of pre-recorded samples and results in […]