Get tickets to Cosmic Echo Live on September 13 here.
Richmond has always been an incubator for greatness. In the past, it’s been primarily a springboard for our best and brightest to thrive elsewhere. In recent years, that tide has shiftted. Our reputation as a cauldron of expression is marching ahead of us, bringing creative professionals from places we always dreamed to land. When your best and brightest stay instead of shoving off for New York or Los Angeles, you can find collaborators to flesh out an entire team of indomitable talent. The Richmond, VA-led feature documentary, Cosmic Echo, is a product of this dynamic. First-rate, globally relevant content made by mature and sensitive artists at the top of their game is a good look, not just for them as individuals, but RVA as an artistic biome.
What I’ve been privileged enough to watch of the film is the product of a deep reverence for the subject, cosmic jazz legend, Lonnie Liston Smith. As I laid out in Part One of this interview, Lonnie is a beloved but enigmatic figure in jazz, soul, and funk. He’s humble but filled with the genre’s lore, and a progenitor of entire styles of the form. He’s unassuming in the way a hurricane casually lifts a house. He makes being cool look, well, cool.
And on September 13, RVA Mag‘s Landon Shroder, The Sunroom, Grammy-Award winning artist Michael Millions, and Shockoe Records will be screening selections from Cosmic Echo at the Hippodrome Theater. The event, Cosmic Echoes Live, will feature live tribute performances from members of Butcher Brown, Virginia jazz legend Plunky, recent Grammy-Winners Nate Smith, Mad Skillz, along with other notable artists like Ronnie Luxe, Ohbliv, Nickelus F, and Sam Reed. The event is designed as a capstone to this summer’s production of the film; a time for them to celebrate what they’ve achieved so far and to share their appreciation for one of Richmond’s favorite sons.
I was finally able to get the production team leadership on the line, in addition to Butcher Brown’s Corey Fonville, who is also featured in the film, to discuss the story behind Cosmic Echo. We’re missing co-director/producer Landon Shroder, but since he’s a co-publisher at RVA Magazine, he didn’t want to yell in his own echo chamber. I respect that.
So what brought you all together? How did this whole idea of Cosmic Echo come to be?
Michael Millions: Landon and I go way back. We’ve collaborated on a few projects together in the past. One night, after going to a Sister Rosetta Tharpe tribute event, he called me and said, “Why don’t we do this for Lonnie Liston Smith?” I was like, “Man. We should. We could even take it a step further and make a feature documentary.”
Like most ideas, this one mutated as we threw it back and forth at each other, and this is what we landed on. Before I knew it, Mike Thibodeau and Craig Martin were involved. The idea now had wings. I didn’t know Thibodeau before, but I had admired his work from afar. I didn’t know Craig either then. He’s a great guy. It’s really been a learning experience, just being up close with people and seeing their talent. I think what makes this team cool and what makes working with them special is we are working on something bigger than ourselves as individuals. It’s one thing to be an artist. It’s another to be on a team of artists.
Mike Thibodeau: Our team at The Sunroom was coming off another documentary we were working on with Landon last year [about the federal workers fired by DOGE]. Right as we were going into post-production, Landon called me all excited about this idea. He convinced me to take this on as his co-director. I brought in my production company. It felt right getting into this with him.
Our last effort was such a contrast to this. We primarily make music videos at The Sunroom. We’ve built our company on that and live sessions, cultivating spaces for artists and musicians to showcase their talent with cinema-grade production values. We’ve been working with Butcher Brown for the last four years or so, filming live sessions and behind-the-scenes content at their big events.
Having Michael, Craig, Sofia [Feliciano], and Corey onboard made me confident we had what we needed to make this great. We realized pretty early that we had a lot of reach to really talented artists that have intersected with Lonnie over the decades. We knew we could pull this together to honor Lonnie in the right way.
Corey Fonville: Case in point, I’d been in contact with Lonnie for the last decade or more. He had heard Butcher Brown on the radio in Atlanta, WCLK. He got my phone number. This was in 2014. I was already aware of who he was, and I was all kinds of “wow” when he called. I wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted, but I was definitely willing to talk to him.
We ended up talking on the phone for hours. He would just tell stories. He was very curious about the band. Fast forward to last year. I texted the number I had from that conversation all that time ago because we had an idea at Butcher Brown to run past him. He called me back immediately. I was surprised he even still had my phone number. Things just snowballed from there. He’s still so sharp. So, he’s on the next Butcher Brown record coming out next year. And then, Mike [Millions] and I are really good friends. I think one of Lonnie’s relatives is a neighbor of Mike’s. It just seemed like all these things were coming together.
Sunroom started working with Lonnie. In fact, they filmed one of our Space Bomb events with him in the studio.
Sometimes it’s kismet, isn’t it? Everyone tuned into the same station, singing the same song in separate cars. I love this lore. I’m excited for you all and Lonnie most of all. I understand that the event on September 13 at Hippodrome will be folded into the narrative of the film as well.
Corey Fonville: It’s like that all over the place. I’m in London right now playing a festival. I ran into Digable Planets. I was all, “I appreciate y’all.” I told them we were doing this doc and that our guy was supposed to interview—
Yeah, that’s tight. I’m waiting for them to return my—
Corey Fonville: Yeah, well, they were, “Wait, that your people?!” And, oh! Yeah, a week before that, I’m at BBC Music with Gilles Peterson, and we’re doing an interview. Lonnie somehow comes up in the conversation, and I mentioned the doc. Then he starts going on about Richmond, so I mentioned him being on the record. It’s kind of some insane cosmic timing all around.
I’d say that there are a lot of good signs in the air.
Corey Fonville: It’s validating. Vindicating even. To see all of these creatives, artists, all these strivers from our little ’burg grow from the incubator and not feel the need to escape. The scene has matured to where something like this can happen.
I think the critical mass of talent is remarkable. I love seeing the weird little cultural signature that this city stamps on all of us beginning to come through as a commonly held style. Every place has its own aura. Richmond has definitely had it in music for a long time, but to see it emerge in this medium is exciting. The whole ecosystem is bristling with exceptional talent. Who else did you approach for comment or screen time?
Michael Thibodeau: We did a moment with Marcus Tenney (Butcher Brown). We got an interview with legendary drummer Nate Smith that we shot at The Byrd. Dr. Ana Edwards at VCU’s Department of African American Studies, former Governor of Virginia Douglas Wilder, a titan in Richmond history. To hear him speak on his decades-long friendship with Lonnie was amazing.
We got Digable Planets in Brooklyn while they were in town. Plunky, of course. He was there in New York with Lonnie during his heyday. He used to just hop on stage and start playing when Lonnie was on the club circuit there.
Michael Millions: I don’t really know if I have the right words to express it, but I learned so much just listening to all of these characters. Being an artist here and learning about the intimate details of Richmond stories. It’s just so much fun. But we’re not done yet. We are still in production, so we have a bunch of good ones we haven’t gotten to yet.
Michael Thibodeau: Tell him about the listening session with Lonnie.
Michael Millions: That was one of my favorite moments with Lonnie. Shout out to Audio Exchange, who contributed a premium sound system and speakers for that! We were going to be playing Lonnie’s music for him and wanted him to hear it in the best hi-fidelity way possible. Shout out to Black Iris too for hosting us.
Yeah, he told me about that day!
Michael Millions: It was beautiful to watch this man listen to his own music again (some of it for the first time in decades) and have him smile and say, “Yo, this is still funky, you know? It’s still good.” Seeing that realization on his face was something else. Landon and I had a lot of fun with that.
One of these days, I’ll have a short and to-the-point conversation. Today is not that day.
I’d rather let you hear the rest of these stories in the documentary, exact release dates incoming. Keep an eye out for it, though, and definitely head to the Hippodrome on the 13th for Cosmic Echoes Live and be a part of Richmond cinema history.
Gallery photos courtesy of Mr. Fili
Main photo courtesy of Mr Fili.
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