It all started with a punk kid’s tweet. Alterna-rockers Against Me! had heard about friends in NOFX working with C’ville-based Champion Brewing Company on a collaboration beer. Guitarist James Bowman, doing some recording with Mike Burkett (aka Fat Mike) of NOFX, tried the beer and tweeted at Champion brew master Hunter Smith that he liked […]
It’s 9:30pm on a Thursday. Mono Loco is finishing up dinner service. But the kitchen crew is just getting ready to start things up. They change into their street clothes and head over to Mas. It’s 10am the next day. The Hamilton’s staff is walking toward the Downtown Mall spot for lunch service. A few […]
Eugene Hütz is a poet in any language. Speaking in his heavily accented English, his words pop. They have weight. They hit you like distorted riffs. Ask Hütz if his band Gogol Bordello’s exhaustive touring schedule takes its toll, for example, and he finds the perfect analogy. “Listen, this is like asking people that are […]
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Surely, this means the eyes are pretty darn crucial. But what about windows? “Why is a window important? There are lots of reasons,” said Mark Wingerd, architectural salesperson for Charlottesville-based, high-end windows purveyor Gaston & Wyatt. “For one, it’s the only piece of your house […]
Accomplished local jazz musician John D’earth says people get too hung up on what is music and what isn’t music. Kids, for example, don’t need to play an instrument properly to be making music. They just need to be making noise. If you’re too square for that jive, Suzanne Thorpe and Bonnie Jones are ready […]
Just how much radio can Charlottesville support? Our little city already has a relatively large number of stations for its size: a total of 15 at last count.
Making only 12 delicious sandwiches a month for an entire city is just plain cruel. And Hamiltons’ Sandwich Lab isn’t likely to stop the torture any time soon. The first elusive Sandwich Lab sandwich was announced on Facebook on April 3. The guys in the kitchen of Hamiltons’ at First & Main, the posh Downtown […]
JD McPherson may be about to piss a lot of people off. The singer-songwriter and virtuoso guitarist’s first record, Signs and Signifiers, was a faithful reproduction of old school rhythm and blues. He and his team, working with vintage equipment in a Chicago studio, knew there was an existing (mostly European) fan base just waiting to […]
Could Indecision have been DMB? Could the names Evans and Ibbeken have been synonymous with the C’ville music scene, instead of Dave Matthews? Could “Take It All In” have been “Ants Marching”? Probably not, admits Indecision’s David Ibbeken. But the band, which made its debut in Charlottesville in 1984, was by most accounts a stroke […]
A friend of mine once fell asleep at an Iron and Wine show. By the time the opener had finished and Sam Beam started in with his lullaby-like tunes, my buddy found himself a comfy spot on a pool table and succumbed to a serenaded sleep. I always think of that story as a bit of […]