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Groove-Gaze From Down The Lane

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From the instrumental psychedelic music they play to the shows they host at their house, Richmonders Lucy In Battle Armor bring a sincere, positive spirit to everything they do.

If you’ve never been to the house venue Lucy Lane, the best way to describe it is homey. The basement, where the stage is located and shows are performed, is lit by multicolored lights, and the size of the space is large enough to fit in a good crowd, but small enough to feel cozy. It’s not a very different feeling from the basement hangout areas in which I spent my adolescent years hanging with friends.

The band that runs the venue, Lucy in Battle Armor, makes sure that everyone who comes to their shows, including performers, feels right at home. When I met with them before their band practice at Lucy Lane, they invited me to sit at an L-shaped couch. The band sat around me, relaxed in their space, and I could tell that while Lucy Lane was meant to feel like home for those who visit, it didn’t just feel like home for the band. It was home for them. Lucy in Battle Armor quickly proved they were more than just any Richmond house band. They were a family.

Lucy in Battle Armor came together as a band over time. The original members met when they were all working at a Chili’s years ago. After they stopped working together they briefly went their separate ways before rejoining together as a band. Guitarist David Bowman and drummer Andrew Smith began writing music together. Andrew Westbrook was a member of a couple different bands for a while, then eventually joined Bowman and Smith as their bassist. Synth player Brittany Thompson joined the band later.

“I actually used to just come by, hang out and draw pictures, and drink wine,” Thompson said. “And I actually joined by fluke, because they had tried a few different synth options, as far as people and actual instruments. I started playing one night and we didn’t really stop, and they didn’t kick me out.”

Photo by Miranda Jaroneski

By the end of 2011, Lucy in Battle Armor was a full band. Eight years later, they are finally releasing their debut album, with a release show at The Camel on Sunday, December 15. Recording for the LP, entitled Sporadic Organic Panoramic Hammock Epidemics, initially began two years ago and was just recently completed.

The band members’ personal lives were some of the reasons why it took so long. But the main reason for the delay for the album was that, while Lucy in Battle Armor performs as a band, they also regularly host house shows at their home/venue, Lucy Lane.

“[Lucy Lane] is where we recorded our album, in this room,” Bowman said. “So everything that we do as a band gets put on hold when we’re hosting shows. The focus has always been: we get in town, we do our thing. We have our show. We make sure the touring band makes a little something for their troubles, and that’s always been the priority. Unfortunately, what that meant for us as a band is that everything takes forever.”

Lucy in Battle Armor is an all-instrumental band that performs self-described “groove-gaze” music.

“We’re shoegaze, but with grooves,” Bowman said. “We’re not My Bloody Valentine. We’re not George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic. We’re there somewhere in the middle.”

This genre of music stood out in the Richmond music scene when the band first began. At the time, Richmond was saturated in metal bands, and they were bringing to the scene a new, groovy psychedelic sound.

“We felt, more so then than now, as outcasts playing shows, because we would be put on all-metal, punk, hardcore, math-rock show bills,” Bowman said. “It worked in our favor, and I think it allowed us to stand out a little bit at the time.”

Lucy in Battle Armor has also chosen not to have a vocalist. The band had experimented before with vocalists, and had a couple perform in some of their shows. However, as they kept playing, they began to realize that vocals hindered rather than helped them produce authentic music.

“I feel like, once you read lyrics, it kind of bottlenecks what the artist meant for that song,” Westbrook said. “Instrumental doesn’t have that bottleneck. You can have those interpretations yourself.”

Listeners that know Lucy in Battle Armor will be familiar with the tracks on the LP, as they are songs the band has been performing for years now. However, they did hint that new songs were in the works, and that they hoped to get a follow-up EP out in the near future.

Recorded at Lucy Lane, the tracks for the LP were recorded live, in order to capture the authentic feeling of the performance in a space where the entire band was comfortable and knew how their songs would sound. For that reason, Lucy Lane can almost be viewed as the fifth instrument in the band.

You can hear it when you listen to the LP. While the quality of the sound is great, it isn’t too polished, like it might be in a professional studio. Instead, there is a slight roughness to it, and that roughness gives the LP the exact character the band itself has, perfectly encapsulating their close relationship with their home venue.

Photo by Miranda Jaroneski

The band established Lucy Lane two years after their initial formation. Over time, it has become an established venue in Richmond for touring groups, and the band does the best they can to accommodate them. With a multi-year history of shows under their belt, Lucy Lane is a permanent fixture in the Richmond scene, especially compared to most other house show venues in the city, many of which are merely temporary spaces that last a matter of months, or less. The band devotes significant portions of their time to maintaining the space, and ensuring that it can carry on for years into the future.

One advantage Lucy Lane has over many other house venues in the city is its location in a more isolated part of the Richmond area, allowing them to host shows with less stress and more freedom. They don’t have close neighbors, so they don’t have to worry about noise concerns or city ordinances. They also have more space for parking, making it easier for both touring bands and showgoers.

The band also works to make sure that lesser-known bands get opportunities to play at Lucy Lane, in order to help get them out there. To the band, house shows are low pressure, low expectation environments — perfect opportunities both for rookie musicians to get exposure and also for musicians in general to cut loose and experiment more with their craft.

Touring bands that visit Lucy Lane to perform are given a private bunk room to store personal belongings and to sleep in after the show. They also have access to full bathroom facilities, including showers — a luxury underground touring bands don’t take for granted. In the morning, someone from the band will cook breakfast for them before they get back on the road.

“They don’t have to worry about things walking off anywhere,” said Miranda Jaroneski, who manages the band and the Lucy Lane venue. “Strictly the touring band, and only one of us, will go in there, so they have a safe space to call their own while playing a big show. It would be important to me if I’m staying at someone else’s house to feel safe and protected, and have my own little area.”

Photo by Miranda Jaroneski

For showgoers, the band tries to make Lucy Lane a place where they can come to truly experience music, not just go to a social event. The location helps, since in most cases showgoers have to drive themselves. This means that most show up sober, compared to other house shows in the heart of the city, where people can drink ahead of time and then walk over.

“The people that come here are kind of going out of their way,” Smith said. “And they’re coming here because they want to see music. We have shows where you can party, but it’s not a party where bands are playing. We don’t really have any strong opinions on what anybody does, as long as they’re respectful of everybody that’s here and they can maintain themselves.”

The band is considering ways to expand Lucy Lane. One day, they’re hoping to be able to have more than one stage at a time, so multiple bands can play at once in a festival atmosphere. However, their main ideas and goals, both as a band and as venue hosts, remain the same.

“The values of the venue are coherent with the values of the band,” said Jaroneski. “Community, hospitality, and overall, just having a great old time and bringing people together.”

Lucy In Battle Armor’s record release show for Sporadic Organic Panoramic Hammock Epidemics, featuring special guests JJ Speaks, Retrosphere, and Kristeva, will take place on Sunday, December 15 at The Camel, located at 1621 W. Broad St. Doors open at 7 PM. Tickets are $5 in advance, $8 at the door, and can be purchased online at Eventbrite.

Top Photo by Miranda Jaroneski

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Psych-Out: Plastic Nancy Brings The Basement Fuzz

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Young psychedelic quartet Plastic Nancy is giving Richmond’s DIY scene a much-needed dose of lysergic punk heaviness.

Plastic Nancy has had a busy year. Between releasing an EP, playing shows all over Richmond, and even hosting shows in their own home, one might think they’d be ready for a break. But the psychedelic four-piece is rolling full steam ahead, with plans for a new release and a tour in the months to come. With ambition like this, it’s not hard to tell why Plastic Nancy is becoming a force to be reckoned with in Richmond’s music scene.

Guitarist Sam Schneider started Plastic Nancy three years ago when he was in a band called Shirt/Pants. “I wasn’t really the singer in that band and I wanted an outlet for my songs, something a little more intricate,” Schneider said.

That outlet became Plastic Nancy, named after a line in the song “The Daily Planet” by Love. Originally a duo, Plastic Nancy has undergone several lineup changes. Guitarist John Degarmo joined the band in September 2016 when he met Schneider at VCU. Bassist Michael Reyes became a member in February 2018, and the lineup solidified in August 2018 when Plastic Nancy moved to a house in Oregon Hill with Brian Albertson, who became their drummer.

Having a solid lineup has been beneficial to Plastic Nancy; frequently changing lineups made early shows an adventure — and not necessarily in a good way. “Each show would have a different lineup, and we had really good shows and really bad shows,” Schneider said. “Now it’s a lot more consistent.”

While Plastic Nancy fits squarely into the genre of psychedelic rock, their sound is flexible. Space Luau, the band’s first full-length album, showcases them at their most psychedelic. Songs like “Mommy Thinks The Birds Are After Her” and “Years From Now” grab the listener’s attention.

A year later, Plastic Nancy released “Little Bridges,” a single that stands apart from the rest of the discography due to its distinctive country flare. To get the perfect sound, Degarmo used a slide guitar on the track. “I learned to play it exclusively for that song,” he said.

Plastic Nancy continued to demonstrate the flexibility of their sound with the January 2019 release of Fuzztime, their most recent EP. Fuzztime is first and foremost a rock record, showing off the band’s heavier side. Schneider attributes the shift towards a punk rock sound to drummer Albertson: “A big part of that is how hard Brian hits the drums. We can’t play soft songs like that.”

The diversity of Plastic Nancy’s sound is especially apparent at shows. “We like to keep it varied,” Schneider said. “In any given set there will be a slower song in there, a song with no effects. And then the next song will have all the pedals and be as fuzzy as possible.”

Degarmo noted that the band can adapt each set to better fit in with the venue, crowd, and other bands that are playing. But Albertson mentioned what may be most important about any Plastic Nancy live set. “A lot of it’s pretty intense,” he said. “Most of it, even.”

For a band that lives together, it probably goes without saying that the songwriting process is pretty collaborative. “It’s very convenient that you can just walk out of your room if you’re feeling inspired and ask to practice,” Schneider said. When someone in the band has an idea for a song, the idea is presented and the rest of the band helps to fine tune the song until it’s ready to be recorded. They’ve even built a studio in the basement of their house, allowing them to record whenever they want.

For about six months, Plastic Nancy hosted DIY shows in their living room. Many popular local bands played shows in what was known as Plastic Palace, including Deli Kings, Toward Space, and Hot Spit.

“When you’re playing a show, there’s a lot of stuff going on,” Schneider said. “But when we are playing at home, it’s just like practice. We can really give our best performance.”

Like anyone that hosts shows, Plastic Nancy ran into some problems.

“Throwing shows is very rewarding, but it’s also a lot to deal with ,” Schneider said. “A problem we ran into is that it’s not safe. This is kind of an older house — if this porch collapsed, that would not be good.”

Despite their concerns, though, Degarno adds, “We want to throw one more.”

Regardless of whether or not the Plastic Palace hosts any more shows, Plastic Nancy has a lot coming up. The band plans to release a new EP in the next month featuring at least six songs — some brand new, as well as some songs that have been played at shows but never recorded.

In order to accomplish those plans, though, they’ll have to focus. “We have a studio in our basement, but one issue that we run into is that we end up taking breaks a lot because it’s so accessible to us,” Schneider said.

Following the EP release, Plastic Nancy will be embarking on their first tour this July. The band will spend two and a half weeks traveling out west, with stops in Nashville, Austin, and Tucson. While they’ll be alone for most of the tour, plans are being made to meet up with another local band for the final few dates.

With an impressive catalog of music behind them already, Plastic Nancy is sprinting into the future. With their unique, flexible sound and energetic live performances, they’ve got something for everyone.

Top Photo by Catherine Boyd, via Facebook

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Gone, But Not Forgotten: The History of Punk House 805 W. Cary Street

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Earlier this month, nearly half of the row houses and storefronts on the 800 block of West Cary Street were demolished to make way for the construction of 805W, a controversial $18 million 100-unit apartment complex that will sit at the border of the Oregon Hill neighborhood on the corner of Laurel and Cary streets. The distinctive, historic architecture of those buildings, several of which were built before the Civil War, will be replaced by a hulking residential complex that stands in harsh contrast to the neighborhood surrounding it.

805 W. Cary St. Photo By: Daniel Berti

The erasure of those buildings came as a shock to many, but the loss of historic Richmond architecture is not the only story. The house at 805 W. Cary St., now razed, was the central spot for punk and hardcore shows here from 1992 to 1999, and was part of the vibrant 90s music scene in Richmond. The loss of the building itself is of no consequence to Richmond punk history, but it is indicative of the cultural changes that have happened in Richmond over the last 20years as it has become a more attractive destination for young professionals.

The house was a hub for local and touring acts at the time, and like many long-running house show venues, it was a revolving door for musicians, artists, and activists. Taylor Steele, frontman for Richmond hardcore band Four Walls Falling, lived at the house early on and did much of the booking. He said that the band also practiced in the basement of the house for several years, right around the time they were writing the songs that would appear on their second album, Food For Worms.

Four Walls Falling

“If there wasn’t a show going on, especially in the summer, then there wasn’t anything to do in Richmond,” said Steele. “There were no parties going on, no events going on.”

Steele, who still lives in Richmond, said that the city was not a great place for hardcore in the late 80s, but that all began to change in the 90s. First and second wave Richmond punk acts like White Cross, Beex, and Honor Role began to fade from view, and younger kids moved into the city to start bands that would hint at the modern hardcore style that Richmond is known for today. 805 W. Cary was on the periphery of this cultural shift, and hosted touring hardcore acts from all over the country.

Flesh Eating Creeps, Steve Ritt

“Our place was more for bands who were on tour but couldn’t get a show at a club,” said Steele. “Probably every punk and hardcore band from Canada that went on tour stopped in that basement.”

Occasionally, however, more prominent bands would request a show. Ontario straightedge band Chokehold played there after their concert in Virginia Beach was canceled, and California crust punk band Dystopia played a show there around the same time. Other notable shows that happened there were short-lived Richmond band, Ipecac, and Arkansas pop-punk band Red 40.

Steele said that they often let touring punk and hardcore bands crash at their house, even if they were playing a different venue that night. “When people needed something, we were there for them,” he added.

Flesh Eating Creeps

Elana Effrat was the first person to move into the house in 1992 as a sophomore at VCU. She said that it was an invigorating time to be involved in the punk and hardcore scene in Richmond and that she and her roommates moved into the house with the intention of doing shows in the basement. To organize shows, Effrat said that she communicated with bands primarily through letter writing since cellphones were still in their primitive stages.

“It was such a unique time,” she said. “It was a real community, and everything was done through word of mouth.”

Greg Wells and Chris L. Terry lived at 805 Cary towards the end of its tenure as a show house, in the late 90s. The residents of the house at that time were activist-oriented and held strong political views. Terry, former vocalist for Flesh Eating Creeps, now an author living in Los Angeles, said that the house did not have a reputation as a party house, rather the residents were more focused on playing in bands.

Flesh Eating Creeps

“805 was usually a pretty sober, music-focused environment. We had the reputation of being the fun police because we didn’t want it to turn into a party house,” Terry said. “There was a lot going on in the late 90s though. It was the sweet spot between the early 90s punk, gen X, alternative culture boom and the early 2000s gentrification and VCU expansion that made being an artist in the city harder and more expensive.”

Wells said that the residents of the house at that time were heavily involved in Food Not Bombs and with an anarchist collective called General Strike. They did anti-poverty organizing, produced a quarterly newsletter, and helped orchestrate a massive takeover of Monroe Park in 1998. The legacy of the house, Wells said, stretched out well beyond the 90s, as several of the residents of 805 went on to form an anarchist collective in Oregon Hill and eventually bought the Flying Brick Library in 2002,  a radical lending library and community space on Pine Street which offered books, zines, and periodicals,on class, labor, feminism, sex, queer issues, immigration, anarchism, and more. 

805 W. Cary, Image courtesy Google Maps, 2017

The cultural shift that has taken place in Richmond over the last two decades has been dramatic. At the time, said Terry, “it was cheap to rent a big house with your friends, work a couple days a week at a restaurant, and have a band.”

The gentrification and revitalization of the city in recent years has been a mixed bag for many residents, and it has been particularly hard on musicians and artists, as DIY show spaces like 805 West Cary have become untenable in the current economic climate. Richmond’s rent prices have increased substantially as developers have descended on the city, and the 805W apartment complex on Cary Street is just the tip of the iceberg, which could be anywhere in the neighborhood if $650 to over $1,000 for a one bedroom. 

“It was so sudden and fast that people were caught off guard,” said Steele. “It seems like everyone’s punch drunk on it, like what do we do? How do we fight this thing?”

Terry said that he was not surprised that the buildings on the 800 block of West Cary were being replaced, but that he does not agree with it.

“I do not like it when an organization with a lot of money displaces people with less money by constructing something for people with more money. Capitalism doesn’t help people,” he said. “We thought they were selling and tearing down 805 W. Cary when they evicted us in 1999 so it’s funny that it actually took almost 20 years for it to happen. I’ve been mentally prepared for this for awhile.”

And while the physical house may be gone and already in the process of becoming something different entirely, the memories of 805 W. Cary St., and the legacy it left behind will live on.

 

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

 

Psychedelic rock group Thai Sun on their love of house shows, the DIY scene and new EP before Circle Thrift show 11/14

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“There are the house shows where everybody’s swaying, and then there’re the house shows where it’s like four dudes going ape shit and punching each other in the face… driving the girls away,”[Read more…] about Psychedelic rock group Thai Sun on their love of house shows, the DIY scene and new EP before Circle Thrift show 11/14