When Dave Matthews Band returned to town to perform at the John Paul Jones Arena in April, the producers of CBS’ “Sunday Morning” sent a film crew to Miller’s to collect footage of the group’s early home.
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Built like a rock: Local architect Gate Pratt’s house sits at the center of local music history, both past and present. |
“If Charlottesville is the Holy Land,” the news anchor intoned over film of the Downtown bar, “then Miller’s Restaurant is Mecca.”
No, it’s not. In fact, there’s not so much as a whiff of Matthews’ aftershave in Miller’s. The watering hole might make a Charlottesville “Map to the Stars,” but once you’re inside, the tour is a bit dull—you have a beer, catch some excellent jazz, and take a matchbook with you for the road.
When I lived in Gate Pratt’s home on Ninth Street, however, the place still buzzed with a bit of the library stacks anxiety and weary furniture that decorated the music of David Berman, a UVA graduate and founder of Silver Jews. While Berman dissolved the band earlier this year, the group’s catalogue featured albums that enabled a sort of physical ease while they encouraged mental pacing. (According to local lore, a few early releases from Silver Jews listed the Charlottesville address as the band’s contact info.)
More history lurks only a few blocks west, where at least one member of Straight Punch to the Crotch resides. And any aspiring emcee who came up in Charlottesville during the ’90s likely knows the neighborhood, as well: Louis Antonio “B-Stacks” Bryant ran his Gotta Shot Entertainment label from his uncle’s 913 Charlton Ave. home, and was a musical model of sorts for local rappers from Stack Boyz to J-Willz. (On a less savory note, Bryant’s “Project Crud” gang sold pot and coke in the area of 10th and Page neighborhood during the same time.) You can occasionally catch a melodious squall of feedback or a sloppy, sloshy chorus from a house show in the neighborhood, though I won’t say where.
For me, the spaces in Charlottesville that hold the greatest intrigue are those that make a very particular sort of lasting impact on our city. Miller’s is a place where DMB used to be, a void frequented by the marching ants. But the music that spawned from the mystical ’hood around Pratt’s old house seems to continue to inform the odd and edgy, the miscreant acts that make the most interesting tunes.
I drove past the house in June and it had a “For Sale” sign in front of it. I hope the right band finds it again. As Silver Jews once sang, “Smith and Jones forever.” Me? I say, “Pratt and Berman forever.”
