Locally developed app looks to fill a niche in a crowded market
I’m tinkering with a new free app, and I’m totally hooked. I’m looking at my iPhone every five seconds to see if there’s a number next to the app icon, evidence I have the all-important new “notification.” I’m opening the app every five minutes to see if my feed has updated. I’m telling all my […]
Future Islands finds its place in the EDM sea
Throw the word “post” before the name of a music genre, and it can pretty much mean whatever you want it to. The members of Future Islands, an act caught somewhere in the limbo between indie rock and electronic dance music, once called themselves a “post-post” band. Fortunately, the three-piece outfit is willing to get […]
Ranked amateur: Homebrew for Hunger winner brings wares to market
Amateurs are making some darn good beer in this town. Amateurs, dude. Anyone who had the opportunity to attend the Homebrew for Hunger event at Fifth Season Gardening last fall knows about the quality of ale-shine C’ville has to offer. The only problem, assuming you’re able to get past your hang-ups about drinking unregulated beer […]
Duck dining: Charlottesville Cooking School teaches easy preparations for intimidating protein
Albemarle County ducks, be on your guard. You may have been safe before, owing simply to the fact that some people don’t know how to break you down and make you delicious. But that’s all changing. The Charlottesville Cooking School is training duck butchers by the classroom under the tutelage of Le Cordon Bleu graduate […]
Interview: Brett Dennen on cruises, songwriter’s therapy, and Shaun White
Brett Dennen has a knack for writing upbeat hits. At least once on each album, he lays down a jaunty single that toe-taps its way up the charts. It turns out, that’s exactly in line with Dennen’s personality. Preparing to get on a jam cruise out of Miami on Valentine’s Day, Dennen was giddy—and possibly […]
Lake Street Dive eyes stardom through a vintage lens
Pop-soul throwback Lake Street Dive’s music is kind of like all these Spiderman movies, to loosely paraphrase drummer Michael Calabrese. “There is this whole thing right now in our culture of reaching back and trying to do something new with old ideas and make sense of them in our modern time,” he told C-VILLE Weekly […]
Interview: Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow finds humor in rock band drama
Lou Barlow has been involved in some of the quaintest rock ’n’ roll feuds of all time. In an industry where grudges are common and time seems only to deepen rifts between once-close bandmates, the Dinosaur Jr. bassist and Sebadoh frontman has pretty much made up with everyone he’s ever crossed. The lo-fi legend was […]
Sound the alarm: What you need to know about fire safety
In the wake of the January Keswick fire that took the lives of a woman and her two children in mid-January, Charlottesville Fire Department Batallion Chief Rich Jones said CFD’s goal is never to have another fire death in the area. It’s a lofty aim, he admitted, but through education and preparedness, it could be […]
Strategic storytelling: UVA prof says parents can help children edit life’s narratives
What story do your kids tell themselves about why they do the things they do? It’s a question that’s critical for children’s wellbeing, according to UVA psychology professor Tim Wilson. Wilson, a social psychologist, says people can improve their lives by controlling and editing their internal narrative. For example, if a new college student tanks […]
Modern master puts his spin on ancient instrument
Sometime in late elementary school, you learn about the didgeridoo (occasionally spelled didjeridu). It’s a funky instrument played by half naked Aboriginal people in the Australian bush. It’s more than a thousand years old. It doesn’t actually sound all that great. Then, while attending a Phish show, you come across another didge. It’s pressed to […]
What happens when you seek out Charlottesville’s top rated beer servers?
The next big thing in beer is going to be weed. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. You’ve likely heard of sommeliers, the expertly trained snobs who help you negotiate a wine list. But you might not have heard of cicerones, the sommeliers of the beer world. Trained to guide you through ale and lager […]
Pig picky: At the table with the Kansas City Barbecue Society
When I received an e-mail about a bunch of barbecue competition judges getting together in January to taste some ’cue because they were “missing the competition smoke in the dead of winter,” I was skeptical. “You realize this could be the most awkward hour of my life,” I told my editor. A dozen strangers, around […]
Joe Pug takes one last spin before making a new record
The cover art on singer-songwriter Joe Pug’s latest album, The Great Despiser, shows a nearly naked man barely hanging on to the end of a rising balloon. Who knows what it means? Pug says his lyrics are somewhat autobiographical, but they have enough metaphor and allegory thrown in to create some space between the man […]
Burger bash: The Korner quietly serves up a crosstown rivalry
Almost nothing upsets me more than a poorly constructed sandwich. I’m not kidding. This may show my crazy a bit more than is appropriate for general audiences, but I have literally coldcocked a sandwich for falling apart in my hands. Yep. Dropped it on the plate, and decked it. If you’re anything like me (God […]
Perfect pairings: Finding the right combination of food, drinks, and personalities during Restaurant Week
Ask restaurateurs about the conceit known as Restaurant Week, and you’ll get a variety of responses—some of which they want off the record, some of which would be unfit to print if they allowed it. Owners typically love the idea; chefs typically bitch about it. Because one thing is true across the board—it’s the busiest […]
Interview: Matthew Houck steps from behind Phosphorescent
Musicians. They’re just like the rest of us. Some of them you hit it off with immediately—you get them, and they try their best to understand you. With others, you just don’t see eye-to-eye. Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck is the type of guy it would be hard not to see eye-to-eye with. An Alabama native who […]
Passafire likes its rock with a side of reggae
Passafire’s Ted Bowne says he has nothing but respect for his peers in reggae, but there’s one figure in the modern game he doesn’t like—Snoop Lion, formerly Snoop Dogg. “I thought the transformation was well-intended, but if someone starts coming around your house and wearing your clothes and talking like you, it is weird,” Bowne […]
Six seasonal beers to warm you in the chilly months
Beer is like a moody lover. It can do you so right, before turning around (as soon as the next morning!) to do you so wrong. But beer still loves you, baby. Don’t be like that. Seasonal beers, more than any other, know how to find the right mood. In the summer, you want to […]
Vietnamese please: Can Charlottesville produce a decent banh mi?
The only thing that could make the banh mi sandwich better is if there were some obscure, obnoxious way to pronounce it. Then all the people who call pho “fuh” could lord their culinary superiority over everyone else in yet another way. “It’s not a ‘bon-me,’” they’d say. “It’s a ‘boon-mh.’” I take that back. […]
Three for ’13: A take on the best shows of the year
Live music is as important now as it’s ever been. With the days of the huge record contract all but behind us and the era of the small label in full swing, most bands can’t make a living without hitting the road hard. “It’s a hard business,” Cold War Kids front man Nathan Willett told […]
Local songwriter Ellis Paul breaks down the craft
There’s a scene in Animal House where John Belushi’s character Bluto walks by a folk singer strumming a tune in the Delta Tau Chi fraternity house. He listens to the lyrics for a moment—“I gave my love a chicken that had no bones” —before smashing the guitar against the wall and handing it back to […]
Big tuna: Cavalier Diner takes on greasy spoon classics
I was once talking to my boss from across his cubicle when he stopped me mid-sentence and asked, “What’s that smell?” Of all the people you don’t want to hear this from, your boss is probably behind only someone you’d like to bed. Maybe it’s not me, I hoped. But after a quick self-inventory, I had […]
Slow coffee: Is single cup preparation java’s next big thing?
I am a mindless follower, a sheep that would walk with the rest of you straight to the slaughter if given the chance. About eight years ago, while living in Chicago, I started taking down espresso drinks two at a time. You might guess this coincided with the growing popularity of a certain coffee shop chain […]
Whole animal butcher shop aims to increase accessibility of local food
Ben Rindner is standing over one side of a freshly slaughtered pig. In front of him, running left to right along the butcher block at JM Stock Provisions & Supply, is the animal’s bisected backbone. Below that are loins and chops, shoulders and shanks, meaty muscles tucked into the carcass’s cross-section among organs, bones, ligaments, […]
Easy Star Records helps U.S. reggae step out of Jamaican shadow
If Lem Oppenheimer is at all worried about perpetuating the stereotypes that come with being in the reggae business, he didn’t show it when he walked into a Belmont coffee shop for an interview on October 18. Tall and lanky with close-cropped hair, Oppenheimer clutched a handful of CDs produced by his record label, Easy Star […]
Here today, gone tamale: Eppie’s delivers with weekly Mexican classic
I’ll admit it. I don’t love tamales. I do love the idea of tamales. Believe me, the first time I was at a hipster bar in Chicago’s Bucktown and a Mexican woman walked in carrying a cooler full of hot masa dough surprises, I was first in line, lack of FDA-oversight be damned. But the […]
Interview: Dr. Dog’s dueling songwriters trade indie rock anthems
A lot of married couples could learn a thing or two from Dr. Dog’s Toby Leaman and Scott McMicken. The singer-songwriters have been making music together since eighth grade more than 20 years ago. The secret to staying together as long as they have? It’s the rock ‘n’ roll equivalent of never going to bed […]