From MidAtlanticJams.com:
Beatmaker extraordinaire/cassette enthusiast DJ Harrison and Sir Froderick form a duo under the pseudonym Sons Of Frod to create some very reflective music in their initial offering Songs About H.E.R. on Thrash Flow Records. DJ Harrison has always been able to match the song titles to his beats to describe the surroundings perfectly. One track I feel like I’m in Oregon Hill, other tracks I feel like I’m on the J train.
From neighbor Todd Woodson’s email announcement:
My band NrG Krysys will be playing this Saturday night at Lewis Ginter Recreation Center at 3421 Hawthorne ave, 23222 in Ginter Park for a Cabin Fever dance. The cost is $15 a person and that includes a drink ticket. I would normally not post such an event except for on this one, the proceeds will all go toward improvements to the Grace Arents Grand Hall, where the event will take place. Miss Arents built this Rec Center for the people in this northside neighborhood and it is a pretty exquisite old building (she also built St Andrews, Wm Byrd Comm House and Open High in our hood). Doors open at 7 and Mean Bird food truck will be there with food available. 21 and over.
There is more information on the FaceBook event page.
Paste Magazine recently had an article on RVA music scene.
Vinyl Conflict (pictured above) is an epicenter for the city’s hardcore, punk, and metal scenes carrying records by local acts Avail, Inter Arma, and Iron Reagan, while also running a record label that puts out albums from Barge, Asylum, and Hard Stripes.
From email announcement:
On Sunday, January 10 at 5:00 pm, St. Andrew’s will hold its annual celebration of Epiphany Lessons and Carols with a reception following. Child care is available.
The St. Andrew’s Choristers will be joined by special guests from area congregations to sing anthems and carols, both old and new. All are invited for this evening of stunning music and sacred story.
Check out this video about our service of Epiphany Lessons and Carols service on FaceBook or our website. Feel free to share with others.
Bluegrass group Scattered Smothered & Covered held a concert last night in the front yard of the Oregon Hill Christmas House to a crowd in what has become a new tradition.
From Craigslist ad:
Perfect gift for your favorite weirdo musician!!
I came across this beautiful little restored chair and stretched rawhide over it, finished with nailheads. There is a dangling beaded trim that also makes some sound, especially when you use the special rake mallet!
I made this chair for an art show curated by local one man band, Gull at Gallery 5 this past summer. Turns out I’m a good drum maker, it sounds great! And it makes me little Bluetooth speaker also sound great, when its sitting on the rawhide. Best of all, the chair is functional! You can sit until you get inspired. Also, the reverberation of being on a concrete floor sounds great too!!
A truly unique item at a great price! 4 different mallets included!! $200 cash only. Local only. No scammers. No Bots!!
The 2015-16 Gellman Room Concert season features a variety of concerts performed by musicians and composers from Richmond and across the country on Saturday afternoons at 2 pm in the Gellman Room of the Main Library.
This Saturday, Soumya Chakraverty will be playing sarod (Indian classical fretless string lute) accompanied by Souvik Ghosh on tabla (Indian percussion hand drum).
Here is a previous concert featuring Chakraverty:
Local rock band “The Obscurities” are scheduled to play this evening beside Sweet Frog on W. Cary Street.
(UPDATE: Never mind, gig cancelled due to injury).
Here is a cover image from their FaceBook page:
For eleven years now I have enjoyed attending the annual Folk Festival held on Richmond’s riverfront, a short walk from the neighborhood. This year was no exception. I caught such great acts as the Cambodian American Heritage Dance Troupe, The Campbell Brothers, Feedel Band, Grupo Rebolu’, Zedashe, and others. For me the highlight was two sets of wonderfully cosmic jazz by the Sun Ra Arkestra. Sure, I could nitpick, but overall the Folk Festival Committee continues doing an excellent job with programming the festival. Having dabbled in music booking and management, and having volunteered for the Folk Festival in the past, I have some idea of the challenges they face.
This past weekend was blessed with great weather and the crowds were there. There were still a few issues with traffic and jackasses parking illegally in the neighborhood, but it was better than some previous experiences with riverfront events. Hopefully these issues can be negotiated in a respectful manner so that they are not issues in the future.
That said, a huge opportunity was missed to highlight one of Richmond’s most important historical resources. I am, of course, talking about the James River and Kanawha Canal, designed in part by George Washington, built with slave labor, and the biggest and most significant public project in Virginia’s antebellum period. Among other common sense proposals for the new “Tredegar Green” area, neighbors have repeatedly requested a sign or historic marker west of Tredegar Iron Works for the Canal, listed since 1971 on the National Register of Historic Places. How many of the estimated 200,000 or so festival attendees knew about the historic Canal they were walking by? Venture Richmond left it without any sign and treated it like just a regular drainage ditch.
How many of the artists who performed on the ‘VCU Health stage’, set up IN THE CANAL, knew the historic significance?
It was a bit surreal to watch the Irish group The Alt perform on this site where Irish immigrants had toiled and died, without any acknowledgement by the festival. A simple sign, as requested, would have worked.
At times, Richmond leaders and academics talk about how Richmond history is so much more than the Civil War, and how more pre-Civil War accomplishments and stories need to be told. Despite all this talk, Richmond’s leaders often do not live up to their promises in this regard. (Something the late Mark Brady and many others have experienced). Sometimes they are more interested in destroying these important legacies, sometimes to the point that they jeopardize future opportunities.
The Folk Festival is great at sharing and presenting stories of people from all around the world (and we all hope it continues to do so), but that is why it is so incredibly disturbing when Venture Richmond ignores and diminishes our own.
Of course, for anyone who does not already know, this is the weekend of the Richmond Folk Festival. I am always surprised by how many locals still do not understand that this is not folk rock as in Bob Dylan, but folk musics and traditions of all types from all over the world. It’s an incredible chance to grow your musical tastes and it happens right next to Oregon Hill. Yes, there are community concerns about how Venture Richmond is using the Folk Festival to push inappropriate riverfront development, but that should not stop people from enjoying what the festival itself has to offer.
And that’s not all that’s happening this weekend…Whurk Magazine, ‘Virginia Cultural Review’, has a nice article on the Richmond Zine Festival, which takes place this Saturday at the Main Public Library, Oregon Hill’s City public library branch. (One footnote- although the festival is billed as the ninth annual one, Throttle Magazine started and sponsored a few earlier renditions of the Richmond Zine Festival years earlier)
If that is not enough, Oregon Hill’s Vinyl Conflict record store is co-sponsoring the Richmond Record Fair at Hardywood Brewery on Sunday. The description has “20+ tables spanning all genre, tones, culture, subgenre, sub-sub-genre, feedback, texture, vibrations and libations”. It includes a concert by local band The Milkstains.
Here’s hoping that everyone has a great weekend.