Indian stand-up comedian and writer Krish Mohan avoids the easy jokes, choosing instead to build funny stories by forcing the audience into his shoes. His 2016 album, How Not To Fit In, runs through a list of awkward topics such as a dolphin with six arms, the lack of originality in racism and interpreting American […]
Indian stand-up comedian and writer Krish Mohan avoids the easy jokes, choosing instead to build funny stories by forcing the audience into his shoes. His 2016 album, How Not To Fit In, runs through a list of awkward topics such as a dolphin with six arms, the lack of originality in racism and interpreting American […]
Some scour the beach for shells, Charlie Mars went looking for songs. Called to the ocean on his latest album, Beach Town, Mars takes inspiration from the Gulf Coast in depicting salty characters, lost lovers and a search for redemption along the sandy fringes of our Southern border. His songwriting carries such vivid themes that the […]
If Gary Green does his job well at the Paramount Theater, nobody will know. As the theater’s audio production manager, he analyzes how sound waves produced by artists will be affected by rising temperature and humidity as audience members fill the space. He knows how voices sound in each microphone, and where the Paramount’s resonance […]
Old Salt Union’s hipster looks and laid-back attitude pair well with its love of high-energy, foot-stomping Americana music. But the band does all it can to buck tradition with unique arrangements and an original newgrass sound that recently earned the group Best Bluegrass Band and Best Country Band titles in the Riverfront Times’ Best of St. […]
Former UVA Corner Parking Lot attendant James McNew’s solo side project Dump often features guest appearances by members of McNew’s main band, a Jersey outfit by the name of Yo La Tengo. Why bother with the offshoot? As a subplot to YLT, Dump is where we get an ear-peek into McNew’s contributed value, closer to […]
Singer-songwriter Sean Rowe is growing his career with a grassroots approach. In addition to offering wilderness and foraging classes on his website, he splits his time between the road and raising a family. About a recent tour, Rowe says, “At every house, barn, chicken coop, apartment, loft and church, we made a real connection…” and […]
When Alethea Leventhal was a child, she’d sit for hours at the piano in her mother’s Charlottesville home, singing, playing chords and experimenting with sounds. She remembers obsessively listening to songs like Jimmy Ruffin’s 1966 Motown hit “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” pressing play over and over again and using that piano to figure out […]
As a young boy moving about the Midwest with his family in the 1950s, Junior Brown became a good listener, and what he heard was country music “growing up out of the ground like the crops—it was everywhere; coming out of cars, houses, gas stations and stores like the soundtrack of a story.” Brown took […]
By nature, musicians draw from their emotional lives, consciously or not, to commune and titillate. Sallie Ford puts it all on her sleeve unabashedly on her new album, Soul Sick, a confessional that deals with vulnerability and rebuilding, offered through a British Invasion-meets-girl group doo-wop melding of garage rock. Opener Molly Burch left a Hollywood […]
Life on the road as touring musicians can be demanding. But long days driving and late nights on stage aren’t the only enduring requirements for the husband-and-wife-fronted Birds of Chicago. JT Nero and Allison Russell decided to bring their 3-year-old daughter along for the ride. The pair started touring with their daughter before she turned […]