Avery Fogarty grew up in Midlothian playing piano, singing in choir, and taking vocal lessons. When they picked up the guitar in high school, their musical world was transformed. “When I started listening to Angel Olsen, Big Thief, and Snail Mail, that’s when I finally found a voice and I was like ‘I know what […]
Didn’t it feel good to see that first live show after nearly a year without live music? The return of concerts this summer fall and marked one major bright spot in 2021, a year that was otherwise filled with uncertainty. (In some cases, even festivals came back!) But the pseudo-post-pandemic music scene looks much different. […]
Lowland Hum At Home, Tone Tree Music The Charlottesville-based wife/husband duo of Lauren and Daniel Goans have returned with their second quarantine-recorded album this year. (They released So Low, a reinterpretation of Peter Gabriel’s So, in May.) While So Low sought external inspiration, At Home is an intimate look inward, inspired largely by the birth […]
Playwright Jeremy O. Harris made history this year when his provocative Slave Play garnered the most Tony nominations ever for a single work (12, including Best Play). He began writing Slave Play while attending the Yale School of Drama, where he earned an MFA in playwriting, but his inspiration was intrinsic, stemming from his experiences […]
Fellowman Walking Tours, Rugged Arts Charlottesville-based rapper and producer Fellowman explores the racial, social, and economic disparities in our own backyard with his latest interactive album, Walking Tours. In conjunction with the musical release, Fellowman invites listeners to participate in a public art project by visiting eight different locations throughout Charlottesville that inform and correspond […]
McKinley Dixon For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her Spacebomb Records As one of the year’s most important releases, McKinley Dixon’s Spacebomb Records debut rounds out a trilogy of albums that were five years in the making. The Richmond-based artist’s first two albums, Who Taught You to Hate Yourself? (2016) and The Importance […]
Butcher Brown Encore, Concord Jazz Richmond collective Butcher Brown made its major label debut last year on Concord with the release of #KINGBUTCH, an expansive full-length album that showcased the group’s unique fusion of jazz, hip-hop, and soul. Now, the quintet of DJ Harrison, drummer Corey Fonville, bassist Andrew Randazzo, trumpeter/saxophonist/MC Marcus “Tennishu” Tenney, and […]
John-Robert Healthy Baby Boy Pt. 1 Nice Life Recording Company/Warner Records John-Robert’s musical ascent is the stuff of dreams. Hailing from Edinburg, Virginia—a small town north of Harrisonburg—he was tapped to play Something in the Water, Pharrell’s inaugural Virginia Beach festival, before super-producer Ricky Reed offered him the opportunity of a lifetime: Come to L.A. […]
David Wax Museum Euphoric Ouroboric, Mark of the Leopard As David Wax Museum, the husband/wife duo of David Wax and Suz Slezak have churned out studio albums brimming with their unique blend of Mexo-Americana whimsy for 14 years. In 2019, their debut label release, Line of Light, garnered the Charlottesville pair a performance on “CBS […]
Stray Fossa’s “Commotion” is a warm, upbeat indie jaunt—a glassy melody pings away over an active drum track while far-off vocals give the whole thing a touch of the surreal. The tune clocks in at under three minutes, but that was enough to catch the attention of NYC-based talent scout Matt Salavitch in mid-2018. Salavitch […]