Known around the state as a one-man, country-bluegrass-blues band, Jason Ring improvises fiery, intricate loops on the guitar, banjo, mandolin, dobro, and bass. Ring grew up in Galax, Virginia, a town that echoes with tunes from the world famous Galax Fiddler’s Convention, and at age 5 he started picking his own brew of bluegrass, Piedmont […]
Known around the state as a one-man, country-bluegrass-blues band, Jason Ring improvises fiery, intricate loops on the guitar, banjo, mandolin, dobro, and bass. Ring grew up in Galax, Virginia, a town that echoes with tunes from the world famous Galax Fiddler’s Convention, and at age 5 he started picking his own brew of bluegrass, Piedmont […]
Beverly Weston, aging poet and professor, sits among overstuffed bookshelves and reflects on the sum of his life: a marriage bound by whiskey and pills, a career lost in the shadows of tortured art. He quotes T.S. Eliot—“life is very long”—to his newly hired, live-in housekeeper, a young Cheyenne woman named Johnna, and admits it […]
Singer-songwriter Holly Renee Allen (left) plays enchanting, vibrant, and lyrically intelligent music that captures the soul of the South. The Shenandoah Valley native has logged hours on the road, collaborated with some of Nashville’s heavyweights, and has the guitar string calluses to prove that hard work pays off with Big Love, the title of her […]
Josh Urban is on the search for good in the world, and this Friday, May 31, he’ll be looking for it in Charlottesville. His stop is part of the Josh Urban Rail Tour, also known as “The Search for Good Tour-finding those who rock the world,” which involves playing music (a mix of blues, rock, and […]
If you like to get down, the Turnpike Troubadours’ raw, blue collar energy is sure to speak to you. The Oklahoma quintet, featuring fiddle and bass, has become well-known in America’s heartland for its passionate authenticity and dynamic live show. Currently promoting a third studio album, Goodbye Normal Street, the rowdy and quick-witted Troubadours’ flinty genre-melding […]
Champion Brewing and the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative are collaborating with residents in the Belmont neighborhood to produce and brand a summer beer. Throughout June, local artists and designers will be invited to submit designs that will be used to market the beer and, in the future, will inform the label for its bottles. Artists […]
Josephine Foster sings in a high, witchy whisper with an operatic lilt. Her wild, ethereal flightiness grounded by her prim enunciation and classically perfect pitch. She occasionally collaborates or plays with a backing band, but usually accompanies herself on solo guitar, harp, or ukulele. Her style is both baroque and bizarre, suggesting music from decades […]
The Men are a Brooklyn-based quartet of rockers who, since 2010, have cranked out an album a year for the esteemed Sacred Bones label. While their earliest efforts sounded like a raw Joy Division bootleg, the band has quickly grown and expanded its palette, adding eclectic influences, its vocals softening and becoming lazily anthemic as […]
“The Civil War was a uniquely visual and literary war,” keynote speaker, Dr. Charles F. Bryan, explained Wednesday night at the Bradley T. Arms Detachment 1256 in Shadwell. The program, “Civil War Artist, Diarist, and Prisoner of War,” was sponsored by the Marine Corps League and featured the collection of Robert Knox Sneden, a Union […]
A great trick director J.J. Abrams and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman pulled with Star Trek (2009) was to shake the Etch-a-Sketch and start over. After all, how does one deal with the monster that is the Star Trek universe? One doesn’t. Abrams destroyed, on screen, nearly everything that came before him. It’s disheartening […]