For four nights this weekend, bands from different generations of Richmond’s music scene are taking over Get Tight Lounge. Called Tonal Recall, the series is part reunion show, part showcase and part excuse for a bunch of old friends to get back in the same room.
Behind it all is Good Day RVA. If you’ve been around Richmond music for the last decade or so, you’ve almost certainly seen one of their videos even if you didn’t realize it at the time.
Filmmakers Chris Damon and Evan Hoffman launched Good Day RVA in 2012, shooting live performance videos for local bands, often for little or no money. They hauled generators into parks, train stations, rooftops and abandoned buildings so bands could perform outside traditional venues. Somewhere along the way, they ended up creating one of the best visual records of Richmond’s independent music scene.
“I think we just wanted to be part of the community,” Damon said. “As aspiring filmmakers and people who just loved the music scene in general, we found a little niche and wedged ourselves in there.”
Looking back now, it’s hard to overstate what those videos captured. It felt like every week another Richmond band was finding its voice.
The first session featured Black Girls playing acoustically inside the chapel at Hollywood Cemetery. Damon said he and Hoffman were inspired by the stripped down performance videos of the Paris collective La Blogothèque, filming musicians in unexpected places rather than on stages.
“In the beginning, we had them playing acoustically in the chapel there at Hollywood,” Damon said.
By their second video with Houdan, they had started bringing generators so bands could perform the way they actually sounded live. From there, Belle Isle, train stations, rooftops and old industrial spaces became as recognizable as the bands themselves.
“From our second video on, we wanted bands to perform how they would like to perform,” Damon said.
Along the way, Good Day RVA was helping stitch a community together. “We’ve met so many people in different bands,” Damon said. “Sometimes a person from this band doesn’t know that person from that band… we might have connected the spaghetti strands even further than we thought.”
The project started with Damon, Hoffman, Will and photographer Matt Cowen borrowing cameras and teaching themselves how to shoot and edit. None of them owned much gear. They figured it out as they went. Over the next several years, that DIY experiment quietly became one of the defining visual archives of Richmond music.
By 2018, life had pulled everyone in different directions. Damon moved into television and film production, Hoffman continued directing music videos and commercial work, and Good Day RVA slowly faded into the background. They started talking about bringing it back in early 2020, only for the pandemic to shut those plans down almost immediately.
Now they’re finally getting it together and inviting us to come hang.
Tonal Recall runs Thursday through Sunday at Get Tight Lounge, bringing together reunion sets alongside newer Richmond bands.
The name came together exactly the way you’d expect. “We were talking about bands getting back together,” Damon said. “What’s another word for reunion? Recall. Then Evan said, ‘What about Tonal Recall?’ I love stupid names.”
For Damon, though, the weekend isn’t really about looking backward. He’d wanted to organize reunion shows for years while also giving Good Day RVA its own residency. Eventually those ideas became one event, and nearly every band they called wanted to be part of it.
“We just need a reason to party,” Damon said. “We gotta remind ourselves that there’s a lot of great music in this city and remind the young ones too that, hey, we can party with the rest of you guys and maybe rock a little bit harder than you can too.”
He’s also convinced Richmond is entering another creative run. “I think we’re at a spot now that could equate to 2016,” he said. “There was a lot of hope for the scene then… and I think we have that right now.”
The bands are different and the venues have changed but if you’ve been paying attention over the last year or two, it feels like that same energy is back. New artists are finding each other, putting on shows together and building a scene instead of waiting for one to happen.
Good Day RVA has been there documenting that spirit for more than a decade. This weekend, we get to be part of it again.
Main photo from White Laces music video shoot.
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