ARTS Pick: Nathan Colberg and Grant Frazier

Two of UVA’s favorite crooners join forces for a rare, one-night-only show. Nathan Colberg graduated back in 2017, and his music career has quickly gained traction with beautiful, keyboard-driven tracks like “Charlottesville” (understandably, a local favorite), and his first full-length, Silo. Grant Frazier is a rising fourth-year, but he already has a 2016 album under […]

Vocal exercises: Singer Nay Nichelle promotes positivity

Nay Nichelle likes to write outside. There’s something inspirational about natural sunlight, she says, especially at sunrise and sunset, when the light changes quickly and just so. It’s hard to put the reason for the inspiration into words, she says, but those moments often lead to lyrics for the R&B and pop singer’s next song. […]

ARTS Pick: Sons of Bill

Overcoming injuries, battling “drinking issues” and months at a time on the road would change, possibly derail, most bands. But Sons of Bill put its collective heart on its sleeve and used these challenges to craft its newest album, Oh God Ma’am. Released in June, the record shows an increased maturity in the band’s sound, […]

ARTS Pick: Big country

Rob Cheatham is an ideal modern country artist—his twang echoes the sounds that currently dominate the genre, while his lyrics harken to the storytelling abilities of forebears like Willie Nelson or Merle Haggard and cover topics such as love, be it unrequited or shared, and hard drinking as a remedy for life’s ills. He shares […]

ARTS Pick: Bar seen

Though Will Thomas Reed is currently based in Nashville, where he’s paying his dues in the country music scene, his heart is here in his hometown of Charlottesville. For the release of his latest EP, To Whom It May Concern, Reed returns to celebrate with a release party and will surely bust out the fan-favorite […]

Getting a lift: Nine Pillars’ female showcase is brimming with talent

Last April, A’nija Johnson walked into the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center auditorium ready to speak her truth at the Nine Pillars Hip Hop Cultural Fest’s freshman class competition. Wearing a floor-length skirt, a Tasmanian Devil “I need coffee” T-shirt and a pair of sunglasses, the local high schooler found herself in a room […]

A slow tumble down the local music rabbit hole

Unranked and surely incomplete, here’s an alphabetical list of what Charlottesville-area artists released this year. It’s longer than last year’s, and based on interviews and conversations with many of these artists, I suspect it’s because the past year hangs heavy in our hearts. And so, we have music to sustain us, whether we make it […]

They doth protest: Listen to Charlottesville’s protest songs

Everyone knows at least one protest song. There’s Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” which American Songwriter magazine says is “arguably more popular than our national anthem”; Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”; Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”; Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come”; Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”; Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind”; […]

Poetic edge: Punk quartet Wild Rose is beholden to beauty

Climbing into your mom’s minivan when you’d lied only slightly about your whereabouts for the evening, reeking of cigarettes and blaming it on your friends when it really was you who was smoking. Claiming you’d only been drinking Pepsi and then trying to figure out how to throw away the beer bottle caps you’d stuffed […]