Cruise control: The Garage gets big love on Kickstarter

The loose community around The Garage suffered a shock in mid-September, when an elderly driver, departing from the funeral home, accidentally kept her car in reverse and backed through one of The Garage’s brick walls. Thankfully no one was injured, but The Garage now has a gaping, cartoon-like hole where its south face used to be.

ARTS Pick: Cody Purvis

Pick up tuner According to Cody Purvis, you can’t have too much of a good thing, except maybe “Too Much Truck.” The soulfully deep-voiced 18-year-old is country through and through, capturing the outlaw spirit of Merle Haggard and the contemporary energy of Toby Keith. His tunes bounce with charisma, and at 6’5″ Purvis is a […]

The (All New) Acorn Sisters aim to charm you through the holiday doldrums

One of Charlottesville’s finest traditions is Country Christmas, an annual concert thrown by two of the city’s finest country music acts, Jim Waive and the Young Divorcees and The(All New) Acorn Sisters, with a rotating cast of guest stars and openers. Their upcoming ninth annual event is back at the Southern Café and Music Hall, […]

Live Music 2012: An industry-eye view of Charlottesville’s music scene

To many, Charlottesville is still best-known as the birthplace of the Dave Matthews Band, and with good reason: It would be a very different town without the group’s legacy. But our city has always hosted a wide range of musicians, from could-be stars to hometown oddities to local living legends and an impressive roster of […]

Six reasons to see DMB this weekend

It’s been more than two decades since Dave Matthews Band emerged from Charlottesville and forever altered the pop-rock landscape with rootsy jams highlighted by the juxtaposition of fiddle and sax. While small gigs at Trax and frat parties were the launch pad, the band belongs to the rest of the world now—with 37 million albums […]

Downtown Busk Break: Les Grosses Erreurs of Lafayette, Louisiana

(VIDEO) You might have seen the members of Les Grosses Erreurs (The Big Mistakes) on the Downtown Mall over the past few days. The Cajun musicians are in Charlottesville from Lafayette, Louisiana, after a stop in Asheville. They’ll be busking and playing house shows until Monday. Here they play “I have a broken heart.” For […]

Frank Fairfield makes a quiet return to the Downtown Mall

Old-time-music enthusiasts who missed Frank Fairfield‘s appearance in town two weeks ago, as well as fans eager for a second helping, are in for a pleasant surprise. We spotted the distinctive Fairfield — hard to miss, with his vintage suite, pomade-ed hair, and a mustache worthy of Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood — […]

ARTS Pick: Natalie Cole

Award-winning vocalist Natalie Cole has refreshed standards out of the Great American Songbook from Sinatra and her own father, Nat King Cole. With boundless vocal dexterity and a wealth of soulful emotion behind her lyrics, Cole is on tour supporting 2009’s Still Unforgettable, which harkens back to her ’91 Grammy Award for Album of the […]