Summer Scene Summary

As I finished my last exam on the afternoon of May 4th, I was faced with four months of sporadic employment and copious time to be spent in a relatively sparsely populated Charlottesville. Living in a house with several U.Va. alumni, closer to downtown than the Corner, and working as an in-house roadie at the Tea Bazaar, a music venue and hookah bar on the Downtown Mall, I had the pleasure of seeing local and touring bands for free. My nights off were spent exploring other venues and seeing what they had to offer music-wise.

If nothing else, the summer music scene in Charlottesville proves that though this might be a small town, it acts in a big way when it comes to music. Several of the same bands that played at Baltimore’s infamous Whartscape visited our little town en-route to Wham City: The Blastoids, a rougher and wilder version of Animal Collective, and Earpwr, a hyper-twee electronic duo, played at the Tea Bazaar and nearly brought police attention with the noise level. Tiny bars and venues played host to six and seven piece bands which nearly tore the place down in the process; in one case Dark Meat, a melodic thrash band that defies a stronger categorization, put the crowd into enough of a frenzy that I was concerned the floor would not hold up. The Box, a bar right off the Downtown strip, hosted The High Strung (imagine a power pop version of the MC5). The Detroit natives took a break from their library tour (yes, they typically play at libraries), and incited a majority of the ladies present to get up on the bar and, in one case, toss undergarments. The Extraordinaires, an upbeat group of former Charlottesville natives, came down from Philadelphia to throw a CD release party in celebration of their new album. They played along with local favorites the Invisible Hand and Sara White. This is just a small sample of the dozens of touring bands that took the time to stop by and play a show during the supposed off months in Charlottesville.

Local music underwent some new developments during the last few months. Back in the spring, Drunk Tigers played a show at Is Venue to a practically empty house. Over the summer, they packed the Tea Bazaar beyond capacity—twice. Several U.Va. students also contributed to the music scene and played shows while most of their peers were out of town. Stolen Arms, a hardcore band with strong punk influence, drew a huge crowd of locals and students alike to The Box. Bear War, a U.Va. duo influenced heavily by video game music (or so it seems), had the audience dancing at both their Tea Bazaar performances. Currently, local stars The Invisible Hand are still in the process of recording an album as a complete band (as opposed to frontman Adam Smith’s solo recordings). Andrew Cedermark, a former Titus Adronicus member and U.Va. grad, returned to Charlottesville after recording his solo project (which drew some attention from Pitchfork media), and is collaborating with Jacob Wolf, a local booking agent and former Extraordinaires member (you can hear his keyboard work on the most recent album).

Despite the absence of the general U.Va. population, the local music scene refused to take a break. This trend is sure to continue with more popular artists like the Decemberists, Titus Andronicus, Lucinda Williams, and Immortal Technique performing around C-Ville in the coming weeks, and one can only hope that new students will be drawn out to enjoy the vibrant music community.