In September, WVTF ’s “Roots Down” host Luke Church gathered four area songwriters—David Tewksbury and Willie DE of Charlottesville met Roanoke’s Phil Norman and Corey Hunley in a live show that united the performers through instant chemistry. In a musical equivalent of finishing each other’s sentences, the session found the musicians harmonizing, swapping verses and […]
In September, WVTF ’s “Roots Down” host Luke Church gathered four area songwriters—David Tewksbury and Willie DE of Charlottesville met Roanoke’s Phil Norman and Corey Hunley in a live show that united the performers through instant chemistry. In a musical equivalent of finishing each other’s sentences, the session found the musicians harmonizing, swapping verses and […]
While passing through southeastern Wyoming on tour, Lowland Hum’s Daniel and Lauren Goans borrowed a friend’s car to drive the short distance to Vedauwoo, a place known to the Arapaho as “Land of the Earthborn Spirit” in the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest. The Goans drove past Vedauwoo’s hoodoos and outcrops of billion-year-old Sherman granite. They […]
Not only does Funnyman Skiba keep things rolling between bits during the annual United Nations of Comedy show, he cultivates new talent while maintaining a stand-up career of his own. Skiba has shared the stage with Martin Lawrence, Dave Chappelle and Kevin Hart, and is referred to by peers as a comedian’s comedian. The Washington, […]
Feeling bored with, and restricted by, his instrument, classically trained bassist Mark Silverman traded his bass for a homemade rig he calls The Magic Pipe, and started slapping out and looping bizarre, futuristic, psychedelic funk songs with titles like “The Moon is Disgusting,” “Buttmachine,” “Suckatash” and “Laser Beans.” Silverman, who performs as That 1 Guy, […]
How do you possibly improve on the grace, skill, class and economy of John Wick, the film that wrote the book on making impeccable filmmaking technique appear totally effortless? Strange as it may seem, the answer is do exactly the same, only better. John Wick: Chapter 2 contains all of the typical downfalls of modern […]
Neil Young Peace Trail (Reprise) Despite his 1980s stylistic wanderings, Neil Young is one of rock’s great dependables. His output is perpetual (Peace Trail is his eighth album in 10 years); his voice eternally a thin warble; his grooves bump along like a wagon. When every record carries such strong and specific flavors, it gets […]
Foxygen Hang (Jagjaguwar) I missed Foxygen’s last show in town: Some proclaimed it amazing; others, a joke. One friend threaded the needle, reporting that frontman Sam France came out blazing across the stage so intensely that you knew it couldn’t last. That description echoed while I listened to Hang, a masterful album that somehow feels […]
Hollywood tells us that romance unfolds in a montage, in sparkling date nights and lazy Sunday mornings and in the inescapable gravity of consistent, insistent closeness. But as a veteran of long-distance relationships (I’m talking 10,000-mile commutes), I can attest that sometimes love grows in our absence from each other. The space that separates two […]
Margaret Glaspy doesn’t mince words or deal in excess. Clocking in at a brisk 34 minutes, the singer-songwriter’s debut, Emotions and Math, made several best-of lists in 2016 with its blend of bluesy riffs and pared down rock ’n’ roll. “I do like things boiled down to their kind of most distilled nature. That was […]
Spafford takes everything it learned from jam legends such as Widespread Panic, Umphrey’s McGee, Particle and EOTO and channels it into a self-proclaimed form of “electro-funk therapy.” The Arizona foursome lays down epic meldings of dance rock, most of which clock in between 10 and 25 minutes, relying as much on its hard-driving sound as […]